No Single Raindrop
by LogicalPremise
Summary: Liara T'Soni attempts to gather her mother's wisdom and thoughts on siari, Athame, asari culture, asari philosophy, and some biographical material to recreate and publicize Benezia's tenets of belief. An exploration of rarely discussed parts of asari culture. Rated M for some sexualized references and Aethyta's mouth. Irregular updates.
1. Memory

**No Single Raindrop**

_Matriarch Benezia T'Soni, on Siari, Athame, and Asari Culture, through the lens of those left behind. _

_As gathered and organized by Liara T'Soni-Shepard_

* * *

My mother was a _believer_.

She believed in the power of almighty Athame, in Her compassion, Her protection and Her guidance. She believed in the wisdom of siari, in the concept that everything is merely piece of a larger whole, a stunning work of art by hands we cannot see, on canvas too broad to behold. She believed in the ability of science and education to life intelligent beings to a truer and clearer understanding of the Galaxy, of life, of love.

In the end, while my mother did commit very terrible and tragic acts, she proved that her love and her faith were stronger than ancient monsters of the dark, of old machines and older powers, and that the Sun does indeed always rise.

I have collected as many of her writings, and as much of her spoken wisdom, as I can, in an attempt to recreate the core of her original teachings, before she was broken by life and sorrow. I do this not only as a way to reconnect with happier memories of my mother, not only to redeem her name and her teachings, but because I think they have value in our broken, shattered society.

The very core of what she taught was simple, almost turian in a way: Everyone must take responsibility for their interactions with the universe. If you act in a dark fashion, what you leave behind will be equally dark. If you act in a selfish manner, when you pass on to the Abyss, you steal away from the greater whole.

We often tell ourselves that our actions are, in the greater scheme of things, harmless. Corporations act on profit rather than pity, mercenaries follow distasteful orders to get a paycheck and maintain their reputation, and governments turn a blind eye to the evil actions taken in the name of 'preservation'.

My mother summed this up with a single phrase, one that she eventually took up as her own motto: No single raindrop blames itself for the flood.

Siari weaves through all things, even for those who do not believe in it. There is no being, no act, no subject that can be isolated from the impact it has on others. Every raindrop that falls into the lake is important. Every minor action has an impact.

* * *

_**A/N:** There is no real documentation on how the asari worship Athame, or about siari. And there's a crippling lack of insight into the character of Benezia before she turned to the darkness.  
_

_This document , a series of short passages, will attempt to fix that. I have no clue where it's going, but it's going. The time setting will be after the defeat of the Reapers, but it will tend to focus on concepts and asari culture (well, Premiseverse Asari High Culture seen through the lens of Liara, so double lolz) as well as siari and asari philosophy._

_There will also be snippets of Aethyta/Benezia and a few other surprises. Updates will tend towards irregularity. _


	2. Despair

**No Single Raindrop**

_Matriarch Benezia T'Soni, on Siari, Athame, and Asari Culture, through the lens of those left behind. _

_As gathered and organized by Liara T'Soni-Shepard_

* * *

On Athame:

My mother once told me when I was a small child that the most important part of the day was sunrise. She would hold me up, place me at her side atop the high wall of our hold, and hold my hand as the glorious orb of light would rise out of the ocean, glittering off of the waves, turning the skies into a golden palace of intricate beauty.

It is the sight of her gentle smile, her eyes lit with the sunrise, that I remember most of all. As times grow dark, and our very survival seems unsure – as we bury our mothers and fathers, our children and lovers, our friends and rivals, we must remember that very key truth.

The Sun always rises. Darkness always gives way to dawn, cold to glorious warmth.

This is a principle of the tenets of the asari goddess, _Athame, Keeper of Secrets._ We know now, of course, that Athame was a Prothean – one of three such beings on Thessia modifying the asari as they modified the humans, making us more alike and hiding critical knowledge in plain sight. I do not know when exactly the Thirty were able to rationalize Athame away as a goddess, but I do know that it was something not known in general among the Thirty as a whole.

My mother spoke often of Athame, as she was a priestess of high ordination in the Temple of the Sun, Moon, and Stars. The survival of that Temple, even after the unveiling of Athame's true identity, speaks volumes as to how incredible a person – a being – Athame must have been.

From what I have culled from my mother's notes, the Temple of the Sun was based mostly on the Eightfold Passages, the directly recorded words of Athame herself, as remembered and passed down by the God-talkers. The wisdom of the passages was couched in language using the sun, the moon, and the stars as metaphors for both how to live and how to view the universe.

In Athamian mythology, Athame described herself as a _miathar, _which is 'being of light'. It is important to note that both of the other Protheans worshipped in the pantheon were titled _moseth-maith, _or 'guardians of the light', and their statuary looks like a Prothean. Athame's statuary, on the other hand, shows an asari-like being – the crests are together and solidly fused, much like the head of a Prothean, but the face is clearly asariod, as is the stance. The wording 'being of light' strikes me as curious, and it is possible Athame wasn't a real person, but a VI or AI of some sort, such as the haptic constructions of our own VI's – could they not be called beings of Light?

In the end, what Athame was or was not is less important than her _teachings_.

Athame's key teachings were that Light would always triumph over Darkness, be that in contests of good vs. evil, or in the context of hope against despair. Night and Darkness were seen as testing concepts, along with images of black leaves (Reapers) and long-dead trees (Tho'ians?). The Light was a metaphysical concept, one that is poorly translated in most externalizations of the faith.

The Light was described as the unity of life, hope, happiness, and pleasure. It was not a sacrificial good, like the confining Christian religion of humans, nor was it a valueless or ethics-less religion like the Wheel. The Light (and the Sun) were and are fierce symbols of life itself, of the purity of warmth on your skin on a summer day, of the delight in being alive. It was not only the denial but the rejection of despair, of failure, and of loneliness. It was the vital force that sustained life itself, and while it waxed and waned as tribulations and struggle crossed our paths, it was never truly gone.

The Night was pierced by the Moon and Stars. The Moon was the reminder to those in Darkness that the Light could and would come again, and they simply needed to remain faithful. The beauty of the stars in the night sky was the animus force of all asari, the reminder that we were neither unique nor alone, but that all things together were beauty.

Athame's words were always falling from my mother's lips when I was young. When she took up the mantle of the Ambassador to Earth, it was after reading and hearing the Message, the sorrowful plea of Sarah Williams during the First Contact War to humanity, to keep fighting on in the face of defeat.

I remember her, sitting in our hall, listening to that straining, sobbing, strong voice, reading the translation on a datapad, tears streaming down her features. I took her hand and asked why she was sad, and she wiped her eyes and squeezed my hand in return.

"I am sad because here are people like us, crying out defiance to the darkness without any hope of survival, willing to die rather than give into despair. I am crying because no one should ever have to face that alone, and we – the asari – were too late to save many of them from dying with no hope of a better future."

My mother was always preaching that despair was poison that would destroy the goodness and light in anyone or anything. It is despair, I am convinced, that robbed my mother of her trueself, despair that let the sick whispers of Nazara corrupt her soul, despair that lead her to such horrific acts and to support Saren in his mad goals.

I will always be proud of my mother, for in the end, in agony we can scarce imagine, with her own body a traitor and her mind nearly broken, she still found the strength, when reminded of the Light, to turn from despair one last time.

Many dismiss the Eightfold Passages as semi-mystical rambling. I believe over time they grew corrupted, and that much of their detailed message was a cryptic set of warnings about the coming of the Reapers. But much of their content was to reinforce the idea that we could not – can not – give into despair.

Despair was the strongest weapon of the Reapers, and it is the most vicious poison that can infect a living being or a society. Despair turned the Batarians into slaves of the Dark Gods, despair broke the krogan into a non-society, despair drove the salarians into attempting to change the very nature of their race until it nearly killed them.

Athame's answer to despair is _intheris_, or what most would call hope. It is best described in the Thirdfold Passage, which is poetic in the asari language but not when translated:

_And in all things, as one dances through the waves of life, to see_

_the glimmer of sun on sea_

_the glimmer of laughter on the walls of our despair _

_the sound of the defiant maiden's laugh against the dark night_

_reminders of times better_

_reminders of times forgotten _

_reminders of a flicker of light upon the waves._

_To grasp despair is to abandon life_

_to cling to misery is to forget love_

_to sigh in defeat is to pretend risk and victory are not sisters_

_Nothing in the oceans is ever still_

_the wide sky is never truly empty of light_

_Steel yourself _

_Measure yourself_

_do not abandon yourself_

_Darkness exists not when light is absent_

_but when one closes their eyes to it. _

_Evil thrives when you let it into your heart, _

_when you tell yourself there are no other options_

_when you assume that sunset is forever_

_and that being regretful is an excuse for cowardice_

Athame may have been, as some now say, a fraudulent goddess. She may have been a VI, or an alien with an iron-hard determination to strike back at the Reapers.

But her words, her concepts – these are not mere things to be tossed aside. Fight despair. Never let it rule you, never let it turn you, and never let it convince you there is no hope of a better day. I have tasted despair deeper than most in my life. I have twice lost what I held most important, I have lost my path more than once. I have gazed on horror unimaginable and quailed in fear.

And yet, I am still here, loved, happy, and alive. The sun always rises, and if dark times are inevitable, so is the end of such times.

* * *

_**A/N:** This was written to the accompaniment of a YouTube video: search for Michael Ortega - Cry.  
_


	3. Love

**No Single Raindrop**

_Matriarch Benezia T'Soni, on Siari, Athame, and Asari Culture, through the lens of those left behind. _

_As gathered and organized by Liara T'Soni-Shepard_

* * *

_Two young asari maidens run down the wet beach-line, limned in biotic light as they use the flash-step to move back and forth in a dance of sparring. Graceful flips and the occasional laugh are the only thing that break up the dance, that and the clash of wooden practice blades and the boom of the surf. _

_Benezia grins as she blocks a wild swipe from Aethyta's practice sword with a biotic push, before kicking off into another flash-step to avoid Aethyta's return kick. She comes around with a swing, clipping her sparring partner behind the knee and sending her into a stumble, but before she can take advantage Aethyta uses her biotics to fling sand and seawater at her eyes. _

_Benezia splutters, backing off as she tries to wipe her eyes free, and feels the slap of a kanquess knock her sword free, just before cool wood touches her throat._

_Aethyta giggles as she whispers into Benezia's ear. "Lost again, Nezzy."_

_Benezia pouts. "You cheat."_

_The gleeful grin on Aethyta's youthful features only widens as she drags the blade down Benezia's body to teasingly tap her lower back. "If you're doing it by the rules, you aren't doing it right."_

_Benezia flushes at the unspoken innuendo, not to mention the feel of her friend's developing body pressed up against her own. With a sigh she steps away, picking up her own practice weapon. "I am not as good as this as you are, Eth...maybe I am not cut out for a Guardian House chatelaine."_

_Aethyta runs her hand over her crests and snorts. "Fishbits."_

_Benezia laughs at the disgusted expression on Aethyta's face. "You think I can do it?"_

_Her friend plops down onto the sand, letting the waves run up over her legs, and motions Benezia to sit with her. Benezia swallows as she does so, leaning against Aethyta, as the slightly older asari girl gazes out upon the ocean._

"_You're better with the Art than I am, Nezzy. By the time you're a matron, you'll probably be a commando, maybe even a priestess. I'm just good with a blade... and everyone else has guns. Studying vishan mastery is probably a waste of my time."_

_Benezia shakes her head. "There is beauty and power in the old ways, Aethyta. There is nothing wrong with pursuing your dreams. I happen to think the dance of the vishan is … more art than mere violence."_

_Aethyta snorts. "Me, an artist? Babe, the only thing I am creative with is what we get up to in bed." She giggles at Benezia's rueful blush, the T'Soni freckle-marks cutely coming out more strongly. "But I know what you mean. It just seems we have so much …"_

_She waves a hand in agitation. "...stuff, and we're letting it go to rot, instead of chasing it down and using it. But I'm just a silly child, according to my mother. The vishan is old news."_

_Benezia gives a small sigh. The Vasir are chasing old glories using new methods, and it has started some disagreements with other Families. She thinks a moment before speaking. "Does it matter, Eth? To me, practicing with the warp swords is a waste of time – the krogan are defeated, the rachni dead, the turians do all the fighting these days. Yet my Family says tradition must be maintained. Your own turns from it."_

_Aethyta shrugs. "I don't want to understand what Mom is thinking these days. Easier to just … spar and party and have fun and think of what comes tomorrow when it actually gets here."_

_Benezia nods at this. "There is not much use in complaining you are wet when you sit on the shoreline." She checks the waterproof pocket of her outfit, smiling, and pulls out a small metallic case with several cigarettes in it. She offers one to Aethyta, who takes it, and then lit her own with warpfire._

_For a few minutes they just sit smoking, leaning against one another, watching the interplay of sun on waves, the cry of shatha birds as they dive for fish, recovering their breath._

_The cigarette dangling from Aethyta's narrow lips bobbed as she finally speaks. "Talking about Families...y'know, my mother doesn't like us hanging out together. Something is going on with the Families."_

_Benezia nods, biting her lip. "My mother has said I need to be careful who I trust." She shrugs, and Aethyta takes her hand, transitioning without asking into the light link state that shared surface emotions._

"_Do you think I would ever turn on you, Nezzy?"_

_Benezia feels her friend there, burning bright, and laughs at the very idea. "No."_

_Aethyta nods. "Then fuck 'em." She puffs away on her cigarette, wiggling her toes in the surf, and glances back at Benezia. "We're young anyway. If they try to make us act like they do, I'll run off like a clanless and shake my ass in a bar."_

_Benezia chokes back laughter, even while she muses that such would be something to see. This flits across the link before Benezia can pull it back, drawing a snicker from Aethyta and a deeper blush from Benezia. Benezia sighs, trying to clear her mind with thoughts of her studies of the scriptures of Athame, but Aethyta simply slides closer._

"_Goddess, you're so geeky, Nezzy, flipping out over that stuff you study and never taking time out to just enjoy yourself." She pulls Benezia against her, then atop her, eyes dancing with mischief and mirth._

"_Aethyta ...this is ..." She is silenced by lips against hers, and loses her will to fight. Flesh slides against sea-wet flesh, pleasure melts into delighted exhaustion, and Benezia shivers and bites her lip as need and lust crash through her body before erupting into completion, over and over._

_She comes back to herself, nestled against Aethyta's body as waves crash over them, strong arms encircling her. She bows her head, at peace with herself for the moment, trying not to think of the future._

_Aethyta's voice whispers in her ear. "I got you, no matter what, babe."_

_Centuries later, two old women pant tiredly at each other, one spattered with her own blood, the other an abomination of flesh over alien cyberware._

"_...dammit, Nezzy...what in shit did you do to yourself?" _

_Benezia arches her back as the latest wounds from Aethyta's warp sword close themselves. "I found a true God, rather than a lying fake one."_

_Aethyta snarled, feinting with warpfire as she steps up into a second-stage extension lunge, using her biotics to speed her tired body and aching limbs. Her blade Bloodwaves-Upon-Flesh slams into the unyielding edge of Benezia's sword with a flash of sparks and blue light, the blow sending Benezia to her knees._

_Aethyta slashes, coming down on the oblique, but Benezia merely takes the thrust, tearing her shoulder away and slamming a biotic-enhanced kick into Aethyta's ribs, which creak alarmingly as she flies back. _

_She slams into the ground hard, coughing, and groans as she looks up. "You're cheating, Nezzy."_

_Benezia, for a moment, flickers from a cold alien thing to the shy maiden on that beach. "Like you told me, Eth, if you're doing it by the rules, you are not doing it right."_

_Aethyta groans and gets to her feet glaring. "That was just some shit to get you to show me your azure, didn't think you'd remember that."_

_A pained look flits across Benezia's eyes before her cold mask settles once more. "Well, Eth, I am not in the mood for a romp on the beach."_

_Aethyta circled. "Liar. Once I got you hot you didn't want to stop …."_

_Benezia's face tightened for a long moment before a small grin broke through the mask. "It wasn't me who fainted that last time."_

_Aethyta leapt forward with a swing. "Goddess damn, will you never let that shit go!?"_

* * *

My mother and my aithntar loved each other very deeply, and yet did more damage to each other than any foe could have ever hoped for. I know,from what my aithntar has shared with me, that their love was a deep and multifaceted thing, built on mutual respect, passion, shared beliefs, and most of all a deep need to be valued by another.

Bonds that make us stronger are also a liability, in the end.

Asari bonds are not to be taken lightly, as they change the fundamental nature of an asari's mind, spirit, and soul. The deeper and more elaborate the bond, the more aspects of the two lovers are linked. Bonding is more of an art than a well understood science, although the technical aspects of it are well understood.

My mother felt that the asari bond set us above other races, for the simple fact that we alone could provide unity to the galaxy. We could bridge the gap between cultures that were otherwise unable to understand the other's values, that we – by our acts of moving between races, melding and linking, and sharing memories and emotions – could and had staved off wars and hostilities.

There may be wisdom in my mother's words … but my own experiences are different. My bond with my own lover has destroyed the person I was, and made the person she was completely different. In many ways it did us more harm than good in the long run, and if we love each other more deeply for it, there are also many regrets. I think all bonds are like that – there is a limit to how far into another's soul one should peer.

The lightest level of bonding, the touch upon the heart, is mostly used with asari bonding to non-asari. It is also typically as far as a commoner can bond at all, given their lower strength in the Art. The touch upon the heart is a good bond, as I see it, as it links the emotions and a few of the deeper impulses without changing the nature of the people involved. My dearest sister-of-acts, beloved Telanya, was in a touch upon the heart with her husband Garrus, and they lived and loved each other well.

The deeper bond, the wound upon the heart, is more … dangerous. It is usually only used among asari bonding with other asari later in life, after they have had children. It links not just emotions but memories, and it begins to lessen the walls between the two bondmates in terms of emotional separation. I call it dangerous because it can drive a bondmate insane if her bond is shattered while she is close enough to have it active.

The deepest bond, the Soulforge, is the most reckless and the most dangerous. I have been Soulforged with my mate for decades now, and I … I am not sure who I am any longer, or who she is.

The Soulforge takes two broken and shattered souls, and make one person in two bodies. I am not entirely Liara T'Soni. Part of me is Shepard. Part of me has her angry fire of hatred, her lust for pain and domination, her fascination with devices of destruction. Part of me wakes up sometimes wondering why I am blue, or has sympathy cramps when she is undergoing human female issues.

I have her memories, as if I have lived them all myself, and I always will. I know what it feels like to be raped six hundred and eighty four times, or to have drugs shoved into places they do not belong. I have had my hands covered in human blood as I inhaled cocaine, and I have knifed innocent people in the throat for a handful of credits.

I have been caught in a melting hellfire as my body burned around me, and the screams of my loved ones was the last thing I heard, and I have been near immolated by fire. My mind has broken under the weight of the gaze of an angry god, and I have tasted my own blood.

My mind is so damaged by our link that there are times I look upon myself in the mirror and have to deal with my bondmates arousal, because I am beautiful to her and she is part of my mind and soul. I find myself upset when I see bacon and can't eat it, because a part of me that is her likes the taste.

The Soulforge leaves nothing behind when it is done, and what is put together in such a fashion cannot be separated. There have been times Shepard and I have hated each other deeply, and still we were one and could not bear to be apart. I know in my mind that one day one of us will no longer be able to keep on living, and that we will die together …. because in the agony of separating a Soulforge there is nothing but bloody red insanity.

I wish, often times, that my people would abandon the practice of bonding. It is a source of great strength, and beauty, and love, but it also damages at times. It is dangerous and has caused many asari decades of suffering and tears they can never recover from.

As dangerous as Shepard is, or I suppose that I am, we are incapable of fighting any longer – all one must do to make us helpless is threaten the other. The bond is our strength … but it is a strength laced with negatives.

When I look back on my mother's memories in my aithntar's mind, I am filled with both sorrow and joy. Joy that my mother had love in her life, a deep love that my aithntar never gave up on, and that at the end, neither did my mother. But sorrow in that if it had not been for the pain of that bond, the separation of my parents might not have driven Benezia down the road she eventually walked.

It is hard to write these words, these concepts. Pain is so much a part of love that I am surprised humans do not link the concepts, and yet Shepard certainly does. But one does not need a bond to love. It is an eternal emotion, one that is shared among every race, no matter how brutal. I have seen vorcha mothers snarl in fury to protect their pups, and I have seen a volus matron sacrifice herself without a trace of fear to save her family. I have watched countless salarians, turians, asari and humans die in agony, fighting to protect what they hold most dear.

Love is both the laughter of children and the sorrow and tears at a funeral, the pride of achievement as one's beloved is promoted and the grief and anger of betrayal. The bond merely shoves these things into our minds and souls, but it cannot create what was never there to begin with.

My mother's teachings say that love is the most dangerous of all emotions, because it will drive good people to evil acts, can shatter dreams and leave nightmares, and will not be swayed by logic or common sense. Mere lust can be sated, loneliness combated with friends, and offspring created via science – but love allows no compromises or half-measures, or it is simply not love.

* * *

_**A/N:** This was written to the accompaniment of : Inception By Michael Ortega  
_


	4. Siari

**No Single Raindrop**

_Matriarch Benezia T'Soni, on Siari, Athame, and Asari Culture, through the lens of those left behind. _

_As gathered and organized by Liara T'Soni-Shepard_

* * *

The Thirty created siari, but we do not follow it in the same way as the clans and clanless do. I have often heard siari called a religion, which to me does not make sense. Siari is a way of looking at how the universe operates, on how people fit together. And by people I mean asari, humans, salarians, vorcha, krogan – anything and anyone who can think and feel.

I do understand that the clanless tend to take it much further, and that Clan Moondance almost entirely focuses on siari in the present day. But to look at siari as religion is merely a mistranslation of either words or concepts.

Religion implies worship of something greater, and siari is less about worship and more about how one lives their life and interacts with others. There is nothing greater in siari than one's own self, except the totality of everything. A religion has rules by which one must live their life to reap rewards or avoid punishment, whereas siari does not judge, only guides. It does not restrict or allow, it merely asks that one think before one carries through an act.

It is not something, I admit, that I paid a great deal of attention to when I was younger, but the basic tenets are simple enough, and even asari of the Thirty were taught all the basics, as a philosophical point.

The very basic concept of siari is called the Threefold Understanding. This is not a religious text so much as a mantra, or a way of viewing the universe around you. It is in some ways close to human zen philosophy, or the Unbroken Wheel of the salarians.

The first of the Understandings is the hardest to grasp: that all things are ultimately connected, that nothing can operate in a vacuum where it does not impact something else. People know this, instinctively, and yet reject it – because we prefer to believe that we are masters of our own fate, not merely a pile of neurochemical reactions blindly responding to stimuli.

All things are not 'one', as is so tritely tossed off by many who fail to grasp the meaning of the First Understanding. All things are connected to a greater whole, a framework that means you must always consider what actions you take and how they impact others. It is this consideration that makes my people act in what others call a serene, reserved fashion. Maidens are let free to roam and explore and to see this interaction in person, in what my mother often called the paradox of observation.

What defines you, your beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and wishes – or how you actually translate those things into action? If the former, then why are people only evaluated on the latter? And if you are defined by your actions alone, then what drives your actions? Is it forethought or instinct?

Siari impresses that a sentient must consider why they take an action _before_ taking it, or you are a beast reacting on instinct, rather than thought.

The second Understanding is that as all things are connected, so to are all things related. There are vast differences in aliens. Blood color and chemistry, skin texture and our very natures. Plates, claws, strange atmospheres – these divide us, separate us. Our languages come from differing throats, our ethics and morals clash and our views of the universe are rarely coterminous in nature.

Yet, as your Shakespeare wrote, are we not all truly alike? Do we not all have dimensions and senses, loves and hates? We all must eat, we all must sleep, we are all hurt by war and warmed by love. Do we not all feel emotions, do we not all care for and fight to protect our children?

Prick us, shall we not bleed? Tickle us, do we not laugh? Poison us and we die. Wrong us, as have the Reapers, and shall we not all crave vengeance?

I must admit a guilty pleasure in reading some of Shakespeare, as he is very asari in his thinking in many ways.

There is _nothing_ different about us, in the ways that matter. We are all tiny motes of light, on the shores of an ocean so vast and dark the mind can scarce grasp it. What matter the tiny shifts between us compared to the unbelievable gulf between us and things like the Reapers, or the Darkness?

Siari impresses that a sentient must find the _similarities_ in life, between one another, in order to find our lines of connection. Those lines of connection are what bind us to each other, that allow us to understand our shared pain.

One of the saddest things I ever saw, in the last days of the fight against the Reapers, was a tiny turian child, lost and afraid, being comforted by a high-caste batarian. Tiny talons played with the long, silky white hair of the batarian's queue, an act that a few years before would have inflicted the worst torture and death that batarian could have dreamed of. The batarian male merely smiled and let the boy play, and when his frantic and wounded father, fresh from a transport from Palaven, found him, the batarian handed him over with a smile.

I cannot get his words out of my head. "Don't let go of your son, turian. You may wake one day to find you hold nothing but ash, and no amount of tears can bring him back once he is gone."

A batarian and a turian, both fathers, one reunited with his child, the other tolerating an insult in his culture for the few moments he could pretend, perhaps, that the turian boy was his own child. Siari says that those links, those similarities – our shared pain, our primal fears, our fiercest loves – are more important than mere physical differences.

Finally, and most critically, siari says that this existence is but the veil over something else that lies beyond mere physicality. It is, I believe, this aspect that leads many to categorize siari as a religion of worship, rather than a philosophy.

Many religions offer some form of afterlife. Turians believe that truly worthy and valorous souls live on as the spirits, an eternal duty to watch over their people. Batarians believe that the soul migrates through the eyes and passes beyond, elcor believe their spirits return to the earth, and humans believe that souls move onto spiritual oneness with their God.

Siari posits that all of these beliefs are more than merely wishful thinking, that something vital and profound in our souls survives the death of our physical forms. That the purpose of 'life' is merely to develop and mature a soul, to prepare it for that next stage. That our connections, our actions, our place in the universe, is merely one more step in a journey we can scarce imagine.

Asari do not fear death. Much of who we are – our loves and dreams, our memories and beliefs, our hopes and cares – are left behind in the minds of those we bond and meld with. I myself have the faint and scattered memories of my most ancient ancestor, Nathess, as she drove _Oceans-Nightfallen-Mist _into the black heart of the Silent Queen, and the expression of amused agony on the ardat-yakshi's face still makes me shiver, even though Nathess and the Silent Queen have been dead more than ten thousand years.

It makes asari … resistant … to the fear of death so many other races feel. By the time an asari is read to pass on, we are dreadfully tired. Our bodies may last more than a thousand years, but the weight of such years begins to pull one down and away. Siari, I think, aids in fighting this pull, to remind one that there is more to life than merely living the here and now.

My mother practiced siari philosophy without giving much credence to the more modern interpretations, those that suggest some kind of mystical energy field that brings all beings together. This aspect of siari is more recent and frankly not the true concepts as practiced for many long years.

Siari is the unseen, the unfelt – it is the emotions that bind us and tie us, the impacts that seemingly innocent and momentary connections make.

* * *

Siari is used in many ways in the daily life of asari, but none more common than the Gestures. Siari is expressed in hand gestures, of which there are nine.

Unity, separation, agreement, negation, calm, closure, welcome, departure, and frustration. Each gesture has a particular meaning, which is often used to remind one of an aspect of siari.

Siari unity is the expression of the concept that all are connected. It is often used when attempting to find common ground in an argument, or to express that two viewpoints can both be met by a third view. It is a commonly used gesture, and is polite in tone.

Opposed to it is the gesture of siari separation, a sign indicating that the topic or the speaker is acting in a way unfit or in violation of the concepts of trying to find a communal path. It is not a hostile sign, merely one of disagreement.

Siari agreement is a sign of joining your voice to someone else, to support the points made by that person and to suggest you are in total agreement. Often used as a complement, it can be taken poorly if the statement is a direct challenge to another.

Siari negation is the strongest negative of the signs, a complete rejection of everything said. It implies that the act or discussion is so off-putting that no better spin or compromise can be taken regarding it.

Siari calm is a sign used when two viewpoints collide. It does not suggest that the user has any better answers, only that anger and violence solves nothing and ruins much.

Siari closure is the most used of the hand gestures, and it has certain ritualistic significance, similar to the human 'Amen' or the quarian 'Kee'lah selai'. It suggests that the aspects of siari have been met in full, and that all that remains is actions on the words.

Siari welcome and departure are merely gestures of greeting and farewell, with an invitation to participate in discussion or a sign that one's words will be taken into consideration.

Siari frustration is rarely used, a sign that implies the signer is unable to figure out how to make a concept fit into the framework of siari, and is appealing for other viewpoints.

Siari hand signs are used to subtly suggest feedback and emotional states. The same sign, done in a calm fashion, sends a much different message if done in haste, or with exaggeration of the motions.

There are many poems and songs in asari culture, but my personal favorite is one that Shepard also likes. As with most asari poetry, the meter and rhyme are lost in translation, but the words are still … striking.

_Life does not excuse_

_or exasperate without cause, even if ti seems to do so._

_All things that connect _

_touch at the points of where they share the most commonalities_

_just as all lovers connect where they share the most pleasure_

_all warriors connect where they do the most damage_

_There is no act that is in isolation_

_Unless one isolates themselves completely _

_and then when one complains of being alone_

_their choices impact only themselves_

_When life vexes one_

_then ask why your course lies parallel to that which vexes_

_All things that connect_

_are at the mercy of the tides to move them into place_

_no tragedy stalks about in black robes _

_seeking tears and angst, instead fools seek it out_

_There is no act that is caused by fate_

_is it fate that drowns the fool _

_or the lack of oxygen in her lungs_

_and the fact that she cannot swim?_

_When life cuts your life_

_then ask why you lay yourself full upon the warp sword_

_All things that connect_

_are driven by the same impulses and needs_

_a fool seeks out things to delight and distract_

_the wise seek out things to contemplate and prepare_

_There is no act that is forced upon you_

_Unless you have let others puppet you in your steps_

_through blindness or accepting that which _

_cannot be seen or heard_

* * *

Siari, according to my mother, is the pursuit of a deeper understanding of why and why not.

I have a fragment from her journal, that illustrate the power and depth of her thinking.

"Once, when I was young, a maiden from the Moonfell Mountains came upon me while I was meditating on the natural beauty around me. She was proud and young, younger than I, and she was seeking greater skill in the Art."

"We shared tales and stories of our pasts, and she taught me of her bladework as I shared my command of the Art with her. When we had eaten, and trained, and rinsed our bodies of sweat in the clean sea, and melded in release, she sat staring at the slender crescent of the moon, her warp sword across her knees."

"When I asked her what she thought of, she said 'Siari.'"

"I found her short answer confusing, and I asked her to explain. She said that she had been wandering for nearly twenty years, sleeping and learning, teaching and sharing. When I asked her why, she laughed."

"She said that one day, her blade style would be widespread, and that many would come to seek her teaching, and that she would take in all the knowledge they brought her and share it alike, until she could spread her teachings further, and further, in an ever widening circle. And when at last she became a matriarch, her only lesson would be that if all things are one, then one must be all things."

"I found this profound on first examination, but limited as I probed it further. I asked her what she would do if two ways of knowledge collided, and she laughed, pointing to the multitude of impact craters on the moon."

"She said that simply because things struck one another without giving way, truth was that which survived the impact. That all things and all ways could only lead to one true path, and when that path was discovered through enough comparisons, it would be self evident."

"Not long after, I heard of this asari, who had found what she sought, then lost it all. Her name was Sederis, and I cannot help but wonder at the fact that she was so sane and beautiful once, and is now so dark. I met her many years later, in a place I never thought to see her, and she merely kissed me full upon the lips, and said I was the most gentle lover she had."

"When I asked her why she had turned to the darkness, I beheld the madness in her eyes abate for a moment, and saw that which made my heart nearly stop in fear. Her madness only concealed some horrible truth, and she smiled a ghastly rictus grin."

"She told me she had found that ultimate path, and had not the strength to pursue it after all."

"When I think of how powerful Jona Sederis was, and how much strength she has, the idea that there was a path too dark and too overwhelming for her to follow leaves me in a tired and cold sweat. Siari is all things connected, and all people united, but it can lead to a dark place that is best left unlit by curious seekers. There is nothing to be found in balance, if the dark one must embrace befouls the soul more than the light can heal it."

"One cannot, after all, remove blood from water once it is exposed."

The dark side of siari philosophy is simple – if all things are indeed connected, then every evil action, every corruption of good and light, every sick and twisted impulse, is also part of us all. It is the reality that there is no purity in us except that which we force and hold to ourselves, and that perhaps supreme understanding leads to that which none of us can actually fathom.

Is it good to pursue that which leads to madness, to despair, to fell murder and chaos? If these are a part of us as is love, hope and kindness, then one ends up asking – is there a balance to be pursued, or must one cut away part of their soul to be a good person? Is the very concept of siari balance a lie, when we are told that nothing can truly be independent in the cause that leads to it?

Given the dark nightmares we all beheld when the Reapers fell, such musings may be truer than my mother even dared imagine.

* * *

_**A/N:** This was written to the accompaniment of : Cold by Jorge Méndez  
_


	5. Triune

**No Single Raindrop**

_Matriarch Benezia T'Soni, on Siari, Athame, and Asari Culture, through the lens of those left behind. _

_As gathered and organized by Liara T'Soni-Shepard_

* * *

I am aware that the Triune Unity is still a sore spot for many asari, both those in the Republics and in the Alliance.

But the Triune was not always a dark thing, twisted by exposure to the warping influence of Saren, Nazara, and pain. When it started it was a thing of light, hope, and _beauty_.

The core of the Triune Unity was my mother's own rendition of Athame's teachings and siari, melded and reshaped into a new concept she called the Triune Realizations. Despite the name Triune, there were more than three – before she lost her path, she had crafted over fifty of them. But all fell into three paths – the Realizations of Self, the Realizations of Other, and the Realizations of All.

The Realizations of Self focused on that which made us people, the concepts and actions that lead people in their daily lives. The most popular of these was a near constant mantra of hers, that no wave can be turned aside by the hands, as a reminder that some things are simply too large to be changed. Many of the Realizations of Self were deeply philosophical, and a few were somewhat nihilistic. This was intentional – my mother felt that people both took themselves too seriously, and yet did not seriously examine their own deeply held beliefs.

The Realizations of Other focused on understanding our connections to others, both through the lens of Athame's Hope and through the knowledge that all being linked still meant you had to comprehend those links before drawing on them. It was the study of why – why someone acts the way they do, why you should or should not influence them, why such influences often caused unexpected consequences. Among these Realizations that were widely known, one was adopted by humans when she expressed it as an ambassador – the only way to master fear is to embrace it and endure it. The Realizations of Other were the ultimate weapon against bigotry and closed minds.

The Realizations of All were mostly focused around concepts of unity and togetherness, and what those words really meant. The ideas were mostly about how one thing built on another, how endless random chaos and interaction could sometimes produce that which was completely unexpected. It was from these Realizations she drew her phrase "no single raindrop blames itself for the flood", which almost perfectly sums up the Realizations of All. Of all of the Triune teachings, these were the hardest to grasp, because one not only had to let go of self-perceptions and assumptions about the Other, but to view life through a completely rebuilt lens of focus.

The Realizations were things she claimed to have discovered in the long years of her own life, through experience and long reflection. They were not quite philosophies, not quite tenets of faith. They were credos that were to lead a person to re-examine themselves, to reshape the being they were into the being they could be, free of self-doubts.

The Realizations were not intended to be wisdom easily grasped, but rather to require just that – examinations over time leading to internal realizations. I will not list them all, instead I will list two of my favorites, the First and the Ninth.

The First Realization is that a still lake has no life.

To understand this, you must understand the nature of Thessia. There are very high concentrations of eezo in the oceans, but this is diluted by the waters. Those who have dwelled many years in and near the ocean take on eezo's own hue, while the natural asari coloration is the purple of our blood.

Lakes are a simplification of an asari word. There are lakes fed by fresh water, which drain, and then there are lakes that are merely gatherings of water long stagnant. Often the latter variety is befouled with eezo that nothing can live in or even near it, leaving curious circles of bone-dry rock around perfectly pristine and faintly glowing water. Water that is death to all things.

Many beings do not examine their beliefs, or intermix them in the currents of other experiences. They simply let them lie fallow, in these shallow pools, and every contaminant eventually seeps into and poisons them. It is why the bigot refuses to look at other viewpoints, why those who reject modern technology use arguments to only look at their side of reality.

Any unchallenged assumption – any belief one holds without testing and questions – eventually leads to assumptions, to mistakes, and to ruin. Even that which we once held to be immutable, physical laws like the conservation of matter and energy – even bedrocks of reality like these have proven to be incorrect and requiring reflection and further consideration.

One who does not challenge the assumptions in life is usually brutalized by them.

The story my mother tells of the First Realization was when she was nearly killed by an ardat-yakshi, in her maiden years. This was when she and my aithntar were still companions of sorts, even while the T'Soni and Vasir began to feud. They fought an ardat-yakshi who had hidden herself away in the most clever way possible, by striking at mystics of siari who often wandered into the wilds by themselves.

My parents fought the ardat-yakshi with everything they had, but they were still young maidens – younger than I when I first journeyed with Shepard. Both were humbled and beaten, and waited in agony for death.

Instead, the ardat-yakshi merely laughed at them, leaning on her own sword and telling them to get up. When my mother inquired why she did not slay them, the ardat-yakshi spoke.

"You are not my prey. We are no more mindless than any other asari, nor are we slaves to our own power. Justicars must believe these things because to question such beliefs would turn asari society on it's head. Either all ardat-yakshi are evil, psychotic thieves of beauty and life … or the very concept is wrong, and instead we are merely persecuted for that we cannot control."

When my aithntar suggested that anyone who feeds on the lives of others can hardly call themselves good, the ardat-yakshi agreed. "I am not good, but neither are many others, and the Thirty feed upon the asari more fully than any of my kind ever have. We are not reviled for what we do, little children, but of the threat we present to the Thirty."

Aethyta, of course, refused to accept such words, and at the time so did my mother. They fled, and eventually a Justicar hunted and killed the ardat-yakshi in question. As it turned out, the ardat-yakshi was dying of a disorder of her crests and blood anyway, but my mother continued to think on her words.

I disagree with much of the Dark Matriarch Trellani's words, but her statements about the ardat-yakshi echo my mother's own beliefs – that the Thirty turned asari society against them because they were the only asari strong enough to stand against them and challenge them for leadership of the race. The Systems Alliance's method of handling them – using drugs and micro-pulse inhibitors to completely negate their biotics and abilities – seems so much more humane than my own people's reactions. And yet to this day many Republic clanless hate and fear purebloods, for no other reason than they might be ardat-yakshi.

I find it amusing that if not for an ardat-yakshi aiding Shepard, none of us might have survived. Morinth is a perfect example of the First Realization – assumptions and unchallenged views would have lead to her death, and from there things would have ended very badly.

The Ninth Realization is that inaction is the truest form of expression.

I remember my mother instructing her own favored apprentice, Ylana, on this, and seeing the utterly confused expression on her face.

My mother believed that life was defined as the actions we took only by fools and the simple minded. As she more bluntly put it once, anyone can do, often without knowing why. It is the choice to do or not do that determines wisdom.

To act on something is an impulse – to comfort a grieving child, to smile at a passing stranger, to contemplate a favorite food and have some on a whim. We are easily defined by the actions we take, it seems, to the point where people are often categorized by how they act and react to situations.

Yet when one does _not _act, it is a clear signal of what one finds important. I can think of no clearer example than in how people of power and supposed intelligence reacted to Shepard's warning of the Reapers.

She was not ignored, nor doubted. I cannot even conceive of a situation where she would be ignored or mocked for her beliefs, as no figure of power would be that stupid. But nor was she truly listened to. Everyone assumed they would have time to react, and then when she died and was not there to remind them, listened to the blandishment of the Shadow Broker and his fake assessments of the danger.

They did not act because they were comfortable, and because they were arrogant. The concept of the Reapers badly frightened them, and while they would not ignore the problem, they did not think it would happen in their lives. Even Donnel Udina dithered, while the rest merely assumed that it was the problem of another to deal with.

When she tried to warn them of the coming danger, when she nearly killed herself again to try and obtain proof that the end was nigh, they did not act, this time out of anger. They convinced themselves she had become something evil, that her actions were unwarranted and designed to destabilize the situation for her benefit and that of the Illusive Man.

Such breathtaking ignorance.

And when the storm was truly upon us? When whole worlds burned in the hellfires of Reaper assaults, when the casualties reached into the tens of billions? They did not act because they did not know what to do. I will never forget the poleaxed look upon the faces of the human High Admiralty when the Reaper line broke the _Solguard_ like cheap glass, and they literally sat frozen for a good minute.

Action is what we do when things are clear. When we must think, we stop. It is what one does after that stop that speaks most clearly about the people we are. A coward expresses his fear, a hero expresses his bravery. That moment of separation, between understanding and doing, is often derailed by the simple expedient of uncertainty.

Many have seen the homeless and hungry in the aftermath of the war, and with an uncomfortable grimace did nothing to help, telling themselves it wouldn't matter. Many have seen the crowds of orphaned, frightened children – turian and asari, salarian and batarian, drell and tiny, stocky elcor – and simply averted their gaze.

That lack of action – that aversion – lets you know that you are not a good person. You may be caring to your family and friends. You may think you create beauty in art, or that you have more important things to do. But when one does not act in the face of suffering, how can it be anything but evil?

A human once wrote that for evil to triumph, all that must happen is that good people do nothing. A more fitting coda to my mother's Realization could not be written.

I find it sad and darkly ironic that, given the levels of self-reflection, analysis and rejection of empty despair, the Triune and my mother still fell to indoctrination and darkness. My aithntar's wisdom is more earthy (and sensually profane) but one piece of her teachings struck me as providing insight into this.

As Aethyta puts it, "The worst fool is she who is wise enough to realize she has surpassed common and uncommon foolishness, for then she thinks she is wise in all things, and fails to see that extraordinary foolishness still abounds."

Wheel Mystics, siari philosophers, batarian Pillar-Priests, elcor Lifemasters – all of these figures tend to lose sight of their own infallibility, even when they build the reality of such into their teachings. If I was ever to develop my own teachings, I am not sure exactly what they would consist of.

Perhaps a merger of my mother's serenity and my aithntar's' savagery, mixed with my own depravity. But I do know what my core credo would be : Being wise enough to see the incoming wave does you little good if you cannot get out of it's path.

* * *

_**A/N:** This was written to the accompaniment of : Transformers: Arrival to Earth - Violins - Taylor Davis  
_

_I still have no clue where I am going, Liara is writing this, not me. _


	6. Bonds

**No Single Raindrop**

_Matriarch Benezia T'Soni, on Siari, Athame, and Asari Culture, through the lens of those left behind. _

_As gathered and organized by Liara T'Soni-Shepard_

* * *

There are many things in life that we do in ignorance, that come back to haunt us later.

Some of these things we cling to even as they harm us, because we know of no other way to live. Others we try to change, even when they stain us to our very souls, because to not try to is to accept what cannot be accepted. Still other things inspire us to seek to teach others our mistakes, so that they do not fall into the same whirlpools that we fell prey to.

To bond with an asari is one of those rare things that are all three.

Asari culture is based on, in many ways, the idea of the link, meld and bond. While links and melds are commonplace, the bond is held in near reverence by all asari. And yet so few understand it.

The bond is perhaps the core of what makes the asari the beings we are. Much of our serenity and perceived wisdom comes from this foundation, and nearly every philosophical thought, every artistic action, every aspect of the word written and spoken touches on it. And yet, for all of the importance it holds, there is little that is known about it aside from what is shared between mother and daughter, or two so bonded.

I realize that I was a very poor daughter, and much of the guidance and wisdom I should have learned from my mother was lost due to me leaving home at an early age. Even so, in my own bond, Shepard and I did not know how badly we had erred in our path until years after the Reaper War. There is danger in such ignorance, and yet asari are strangely reluctant to talk of the bond openly.

I have touched on this before, but in reviewing my mother's notes, several of her Realizations were about the nature and danger of bonds. Few aliens truly understand what the bond is before it happens, as most are only familiar with links and melds. The difference in the concepts leads, I feel, many beings – both alien and asari – into the bond before they are truly ready.

As a foolish youth, I once dreamed of the day I would be bonded, when I would have my children, when I would be one with someone who could understand me. As I dug through the wreckage of the Prothean culture, I dreamt of a gentle set of fingers lifting my chin for a kiss, or of calm soothing touches during the day to settle my spirits. I trembled with the frustration of unspent yearnings and desires that brought heat to my crests and blood to my cheeks, and I fell asleep to tears of wishing I could be a part of someone else, who would cherish me higher than anything else, that would accept me for the person I was.

There is a certain wry irony in having those things now, and understanding that happiness and love are not found in bonds, but that they lead to bonds.

As an innocent and foolish maiden, I could dream. When I was bonded, I had no choice but to learn about realities.

It was neither my decision nor intent, nor was it a choice made or wanted by the one I bonded with. In the immediacy of it, and in the confusion of what I had experienced, I did not realize how massively it changed me or her. It has, over the years, become the core of my existence. Far too much of my life is bound up into my bondmate. Food is tasteless and bland when she is not near. The very air seems cold and lifeless without her warmth, color mutes and sounds become flat and broken. There are days that we must be apart, each doing what is required for rebuilding our shattered galaxy, and not being able to feel her reduces me to a nervous, weeping wreck. And yet I cling to it as my only stability, and I lose myself in rage and hatred that frightens even my wife when that bond is threatened.

There are times when neither of us can function at all without the other clinging, sobbing in waves of out of control sorrow and grief at lost friends, lost hopes, and the horrible wounds we have both taken, and no solace outside of each others arms. While there is strength in that, there is also the hard, cold understanding – we are not two people any longer. We are one, and every attempt to act as two merely hurts us.

Perhaps out of this, or perhaps because I am a colossal fool – the latter is more likely – there have been periods of my life where I have given hard and serious though to pursuing the arcane and dangerous steps required to try and break our bond.

It is not out of a lack of love, but out of uncertainty of how much one can endure. Neither of us are any good at truly handling our emotions, and we are, I will admit with hot shame, abusive to each other more often than not. I do not mean in a sense of physical injury – that is foreplay – but in how we end up dumping our stress and inability to cope on the other. There are times the pressure is just too much to handle, and both of us have spent more than a few months recovering from nervous breakdowns. To be free of it and try to simply engage her without such a link would be almost like starting anew.

And yet this can never be. Even if I could survive such, she could not. A bond must be absolute, no matter what it costs and takes, or it is not a bond. And it is incredibly selfish and spiteful of me to even hold such thoughts for a second – proof positive I am hardly a good wife. To destroy her simply lighten my own load? There are times I despise myself deeply for even holding such wretched thoughts.

That she has also had them is not surprising, but unlike my weaknesses, she wishes only to spare me from her travails. We have corrupted and profaned the other, the bright and shining souls we once were at the outset of our battle now tarnished and so spattered with filth that there are days I know feel her want to simply kill herself and I. We have saved the galaxy, yes – but we did atrocity upon atrocity, crime upon crime to do so. Our bond echoes with that as well.

Thus instead, I turn to the third method – to give my own experiences, and my mother's teachings, a wider viewing, so that when one chooses to make the bond – be it the touch upon the heart, the wound upon the heart, or the Soulforge – your eyes are open to the stormy seas.

* * *

The link, of course, is the shallowest and narrowest of connections. There are two styles of linking, the fingertip-touch and the kiss-upon-azure. The names are much less elegant translated from asari, but I wish this to have clarity, and framing the concepts in our flowing language cuts down on clean understanding. I find the rather grotesque innuendo of 'kiss-upon-azure' fits the nature of it better than the asari name anyway.

The fingertip-touch is the faint and gentle link of two minds, to share a specific set of memories. Concentration is required to focus, and skilled practitioners will often be able to skim over large portions of memory without even interacting with it to find what they seek. A given memory can be 'pushed' with enough skill, and most memories more than a few years old are too deeply embedded for such methods.

I wish to remind anyone reading my words that asari do not 'read minds'. Only the most recklessly deep of bonds can link two minds together closely enough for such a thing, and only true fools could ever think to force such connections unless they were exquisitely suited for each other.

The fingertip-touch is mostly amid asari, the casual sharing of a particular memory or shared emotions as a consultation. While thoughts cannot be shared, strong emotion can – love, hate, outrage, fear, caution, approval. Two asari with a pair of siari hand-signs and a split-second fingertip-touch of shared emotions can convey an entire conversation's worth of nuance.

The other link, the kiss-upon-azure, is the faint feedback connection that allows asari to share in and augment a partner's sexual pleasure. I find it interesting that in older times, such a thing was forbidden – only through melds or bonds would partners share in pleasure. The kiss-upon-azure does not connect the emotions, it is pure unfiltered carnality. My mother found it gauche, and I have never felt the need to experiment with it.

I remain convinced this second form of link is a corruptive influence on asari maidens, who indulge in it almost daily in their pursuits of pleasure. The tawdry nature of it cheapens what should be a beautiful experience between two people learning about each other into … gross physicality.

If I seem prudish to you, I assure you I am not.

The very thought makes me smile. Any such hesitance I had at an earlier point in my life have been literally beaten and whipped out of me. I fear I have become far more depraved and libertine than my aithntar in more than a few ways.

But I will never like the concept of a union with any being that I cannot share a part of my soul with. I fail to see the purpose. The whole problem humans have with sexuality is twofold – it is the most intimate act they can perform, but it is also the primary measure of their biological impulses. All races indulge in prostitution and pornography, but only humans have ever criminalized such behavior. The guilt they associate with such things baffles me to this day.

It is this sort of thing that makes the kiss-upon-azure so devastating to humans exposed to it, and why they rapidly become addicted to it, I think. The asari feels no guilt, and there is no connection, nothing but pure, free pleasure – empty and tasteless in my opinion. The cheapness...

I digress. I am sermonizing, not moralizing, after all.

* * *

The meld – also sometimes called joining – is the connection of many things – the emotions of the surface, flashes and bits of memory, the feel and nervous sensations of the partner, both pleasurable and painful, and a subtle feeling of unity. Melds are not broken down by type, but there are light melds, deep melds, and hard melds, depending on how much 'force' is used by the asari to make the connection.

Hard melds are done by two asari in unison, sometimes incorporating other asari or non-asari. On rare occasions, more than two asari form the core meld, and can thus each meld with several other asari – such is highly confusing, and usually is only done for purposes of pleasure and release.

I have only done this with one other asari and two non-asari and the experience was … exquisite, if _extremely_ confusing. Also, turians are very strange.)

All melds are primarily romantic in nature – a link is a casual thing of no importance, a meld lets someone into your soul, if only a little. The lighter melds are usually the most common, as it requires a strong amount of both biotic ability and power for an asari to make a deep meld with an alien unless the alien is also biotic.

The meld is what most bondmates engage in prior to bonding. Typically, as an asari becomes attuned to her partner's body, nervous system and patterns of emotions, the meld becomes smoother, more intense, more complete. It is nowhere near the intensity of a full bond, of course, but hard melds come very close.

While many aliens have dabbled with asari links, very, very few ever meld with asari and depart for other relationships willingly.

There was a human poet – Linpurnel, I think, was his name – who fell in love with a clanless asari maiden who, through inexperience and her own strength, managed to deep meld rather than lightly link with him during a night of passion. His words are haunting:

_My blood was roaring, upon the moonlight _

_As she gazed upon my soul_

_The wind outside the window roared in the night_

_As she split apart my secrets_

_The fire in my body took both senses and my sight_

_As she sank into my very self _

_I lost myself in tides of blue and in seas I've never seen_

_I remembered lips I'd never kissed, and places I'd never been_

_Blue radiance I'd never wielded, and wounds from blades so keen_

_My blood was cooling, as she spent her need_

_As I cried in agony at losing her_

_She lay next to me, spattered with my seed_

_as I fought to remember my name_

_The room was so hot was now cold indeed_

_As she tore free of my very self_

_I am lost in a world that seems half empty and cold_

_As I wander in my own mind, stung by memories alien and old_

_Of words I've never spoken, and vistas I have yet to behold_

Linpurnel ended up killing himself when his asari lover left him. And that is just a deep meld, not a bond.

My mother felt that the meld was something that one had to prepare an alien mind for, as well as one's own mind. There is less control over what is seen and felt in a meld, less ability to filter and shape. Her words are clear and careful:

"The meld is just that: a synthesis of two disparate streams into a wider river. One cannot control which waters flow to the sea from such a mixture, only the direction and the width of the flow. To recklessly chase unity with those who have never tasted such is disrespectful and often cruel, a barbed hook in the mouth of a fish that has no way to pull itself free. The meld should not be used for mere pleasure, it should have a deeper foundation and reason – without this, one has no assurance the mind one melds with can withstand such a shock. As when testing waters, do not fling yourself crest-first into the waters full – instead, dip in carefully."

* * *

The bond I have already spoken of, at least the clinical terms of what the types are.

I have heard many sigh with envy, jealousy or admiration at the bond of Shepard and myself, and I do not wish to give the impression that my life with her is some horror. It is not (with the exception of her fixation on Blasto and her tendency to increasingly curse like Ahern used to). We have become the most famous echas story, the love that defied death, that ended monsters, that survived agony that would have destroyed any other pair.

I will admit with no small or even moderate amount of pride that I am pleased by this. We have sacrificed … everything for each other. But I must remind everyone that the legend of Shepard and T'Soni is not merely bound by heroic impulses.

She died for me, not you. And she fought against dying for me, not you. You did not hold her together when her mind came apart like blow-spore pods in summer's breeze, or spend countless hours carefully laying medigel upon ever crack in her skin. You did not have to hold her when her vile cybernetics poisoned her body and left her shivering and bleeding.

A bond strips away all lies, all hesitance, all ability to deceive yourself or your bondmate. At first it made us better – me more willing to endure and fight, her more calm and at peace.

Then came that day, when everything fell, when the Normandy died.

I can feel molten hot metal searing my legs away, and my shoulder shatter as metallic beams shear through me. I feel my chest shatter and my organ pulp within my chest, the taste of a hot glut of blood erupt from my bloodied lips to smear my vision.

I remember dying. And I awoke to that death for over two years, every morning.

A bond strips away all protections, the lies we tell ourselves to keep our sanity. My beloved Shepard has had fantasies of doing to me what she endured as a child, a thing that makes her wish to vomit at the sickness of the idea. I understand what it springs from. She hates it when I start focusing on a piece of Prothean writing, because my lips move as I try to speak the text and it distracts her.

She hates the way she looks in a dress because her muscles stand out too much, and she feels inelegant and not … feminine. She has a secret terror of getting something wrong when she goes to a formal event, because she had to learn of makeup and lipstick from magazines, of how to speak and talk from desperate observation and long nights of memorization.

She hates rats because she was forced to eat them sometimes in the Tenth Street Red when she was a runner. She hates knives because one of the filthy monsters who used her as a sex slave liked using a knife on her while he ruined her body. She hates mashed potatoes because that was the only thing the Penal Legions got to eat until they passed their first review.

We all think we know our partners, yet until you are bonded you know nothing. There should be something beautiful about such a connection – and there is, but there is also something … violating about it.

There are things a normal person can hide from his or her lover or spouse. A bondmate hides nothing. I know that Telanya, once she was bonded to Garrus, became an exercise fanatic, always slightly under-eating and doing endless situps and crunches. When I asked her why, she said Garrus found a slender waist sexually attractive, like a turian woman had, and she wanted to have that.

She ended up making herself more than a little ill and having back problems maintaining that. I have done similar things, although not involving dieting. Bonding makes you crazy.

* * *

I look over this and hesitate.

I do not want people think I do not love her. Goddess, there are times when I cannot even breathe and am overtaken by my feeling for her. There are times of happiness so pure that I can forget for weeks and months at a time the pains we have suffered, or the costs we have paid. I have two beautiful daughters who I love even more fiercely, and if my life is not perfect, I know full well there are millions of being who would love to take my place.

I am not about to let that shit happen.

And I certainly do not wish to imply that my wife is anything but loving with me. In some ways our positions are reversed – she ends up sacrificing her goals and dreams to allow me to pursue my own, and states her only wish is to support me. It reminds me of how I was before her death. Her first death, that is.

I should not be forced to have to use terms like 'first death' and 'second death', but Shepard, I fear, has very little respect for such piddling things as death. As my dear friend Garrus once told her, dying only made her angrier.

I also hesitate because I do not want to imply bonding is … bad. One of the most beautiful days of my life was the day I first bonded with Shepard. Another was when we intensified our bond after our wedding, laughing and naked under the sun of Inter'sai, the spring wind blowing over our bodies and the sweet smell of grass and flowers in my nostrils.

The fire of her anger racing through me as we strode through the enemies we faced, splattered with blood and laughing at the top of our lungs, sending friend and foe fleeing in at the burning terror we emitted. The sheer love I felt every time she so much as gazed upon me.

I feel that to this day. I can be depressed and crying, and a mere touch makes me shake with joy at times.

But in all things there is a dark and a light, and the point of my writings is not to go on about how happy I am, or how good things are in my life. Not only would such be of little insight to anyone but our stalkers such as the Conrad Society, but it would be extremely gauche and smug.

I am not above a little smugness, but I fear an entire book of me making bad puns about eating shepherds pie would only get me lynched by jealous and outraged asari...humans...turians...drell...a few salarians...several hanar...and at least one krogan.

Nor can I merely wax eloquent about the beauty and benefits of bonding. There are enough vapid bonding planners, who have now started working with human wedding planners in a truly fell alliance, to do such things. Modern Bride and Bond is now thick enough to kill an elcor with, and I do not need my words added to theirs.

Most importantly, I have seen no other works or acknowledgments of the dangers of the bond. So when I talk about the dangers, downsides and darkness it brings, understand that it is only the bad half of the story.

A bond requires strength from both partners, or else it is little more than inescapable rape. It is a beautiful unity, and a violation of the deepest parts of your beloved. It is a source of strength, but it also demands you do everything you can to aid your partner.

The ancient asari glyph for the bond was a pair of conjoined maidens, arched in lovemaking, balanced on the tip of a warp sword. It is a cruelly apt depiction.

Shepard is many things, but she is not a dancer or a poet. Yet in her sweet and adoring love of me, she etched a message on the scabbard of the warp sword we worked on together.

_Duty is a golden needle, pricking my skin. _

_A reminder of the things I have forgotten._

_Vengeance a golden knife, driven into my side. _

_An old wound that I ignore, until the pain distracts me from my path once more._

_You are a golden sword, thrust full through my vitals._

_Slowly killing me by being left in place, instantly killing me by being pulled free. _

Some would find that off-putting. In it I merely see that I am that which makes the Shepard of today what she is.

If you must bond, then meld first. And if you must meld, do so only from love, and after linking first. Do not leap into the waves without at least checking the undertow, or you will be far out at sea before you can get your bearings, and with no easy way back to shore.

* * *

_**A/N:** This was written to the accompaniment of : Viking Song by randomstaff100  
_


	7. Thirty

**No Single Raindrop**

_Matriarch Benezia T'Soni, on Siari, Athame, and Asari Culture, through the lens of those left behind. _

_As gathered and organized by Liara T'Soni-Shepard_

* * *

My mother wrote extensively on the historical basis of asari culture, as a method of attempting to inspire introspection via a deeper understanding of what we tend to consider 'known facts'. She was, in her writings, always very amused by the concept that many asari had, that as a people we 'knew' our past.

The fall of the Thirty has illuminated many asari to the sordid manipulations of those chosen by Athame to lead our people. In hindsight, their actions – while certainly unpleasant – make far more sense when viewed from the context of people such as Javik and Nashan. The Protheans saw free will and self-determination as insults to the leadership ability of those who were, in their mind, the best suited to lead – and their Empire was built on dominance, control and almost unreal levels of sacrifice of the many for the good of all.

As such, their desire to see the asari as the dominant leaders of a slave empire – and to arrange for a method of ensuring their plans were followed – is understandable. It does not in any way absolve the Thirty of what they did, as none of what they planned was actually for either the benefit of the many or even to protect the galaxy from the Reapers as intended. Then again, given that the Prothean plan also intended for the asari to be a management caste for a resurgent Prothean Empire, one cannot also blame the Thirty from turning aside from that plan.

But I digress from my chosen point.

* * *

**ON THE THIRTY THEMSELVES**

I find the question I am most asked by the asari of the Alliance is always the same: why did the Thirty act as they did? I could give many answers to that question, but until now I have demurred. I believe the wisdom of my mother answers the question best, from her journals:

'There will be those who question the motives of the Thirty, who decry their influence, cast doubt upon their direction, and curse their very names. But those who are the most bitter will be the first to crawl back to the knees of their betters when dark things crawl from the places beyond, when aliens descend in fury to enslave, to kill, to rape. The Clans will chafe at our direction even as they greedily seek our money and knowledge. The Clanless will hiss at our restrictions and guidance, even as they refuse themselves to do what must be done.

The Thirty act as they do because in the abeyance of such there would be only suffering. I will not say that I do not regret some of what the Thirty have done. Nor will I argue there are other paths that may have been taken. But I will say that 'what if' is not only a dangerous question but a turning from reality. Regrets are that which is only possible when the mistake you have made is survivable, after all.'

I cannot speak to the motives of the Thirty, aside from the commands laid upon them by Athame – commands they did not heed, lies they kept secret. I will say, however, in the end they did uphold their charge. The last stand of the Thirty against the darkness the Reapers brought allowed the rest of the race to escape, and I would not cheapen the sacrifice of them by speaking against them.

Before I even speak of the Thirty as they were in life, I would speak of them in death.

Much of the beauty of Thessia is gone for all time.

All the slender towers, each one painstakingly built by hand and crafted over a thousand years. The works of art of the enthai, the ribbon-paintings strung between flametrees for six hundred miles, burned to ashes. The Mosaic of the Dance, carefully arranged ground seashells and paints, embedded into the side of a vast plateau near Para, showing the evolution of the dances of the Rites of Athame, reduced to rubble.

The endless gardens and paths of waking dream, the high ways across the mountains walked by asari twenty thousand years dead, are crumbled, burned ruins. The high and proud walls of the Thirty Cities, each carefully shaped brick compressed with a hundred years of biotics and hardened by a decade of warpfire, smashed.

The beauty of Thessia lost the day the Reapers came is a long dirge in and of itself, but the greatest loss was that of the Thirty themselves. They could have evacuated themselves. They could have sent out the Lesser Houses to hold the lines, let the civilians block the ways to the star-ports, and fled.

They did not. They ordered the Lesser Houses to safeguard the commoners, and they took up their armor and warp swords. The war priestesses painted their features and bodies with white and reds one last time, the battle matriarchs smiled as they slipped into ancient leathers and took up their places in the ranks of the Hunt for one last battle.

At the end, there were endless ranks of the hellish legions of the Reapers, blotting out the very skies, crawling foulness across the face of our moon, and the Thirty stood as the ships gathered up our young and old and helpless. The private cruisers of the Thirty intercepted those Reaper forces trying to strike at them, several smashing themselves directly into Reapers to knock them from the sky and clear a path.

The Thirty, so caught up in petty arguments in the past, stood together at the last, each one immobile in their ranks, whispers to Athame on every curved set of lips. Their armor glittered in a thousand shades of blue and silver, white and gold. Their bodies moved in eerie unison, ten thousand unflinching souls, facing death with the same haughty disdain that they faced everything else with. Fingers tightened around rifles crafted by hand, around the hilts of ancient warp swords and modern weapons alike.

A thousand warp swords lit as one, the glow of battle rifles and the tramp of Paladin battlesuits echoing across the plains of mighty Serrice. Then the Matriarch Queen Thana T'Armal, tears upon her features, bade Aria and I to stand away and to remember. She smiled, a smile that was bitter with self-recrimination.

"Let them remember the fools who were the Thirty, curses be upon our names, and let them not forget that when the time came, we did not compound our error with cowardice."

Aria T'Loak, the hardest and coldest of our race, wept. I think she would deny it today, but given what I know now about her, that she cried is not surprising. Thana linked with her for long seconds, then bowed her head and placed her helmet upon her features, the hammered crystal mask sealing away her sorrow.

And I watched them march forward into death itself, as Thessia burned, the forest of flametrees around burning Serrice in literal flames, as the deep buzzing of the Reapers lashed across the land. They did not falter under that horrid noise, and lifted their voices in song as they charged, flashing into kanquess and warpfire as they met the Reapers head on.

I will never be able to forget the images I saw – of dancing war priestesses, clad in night air and splashes of Reaper ichor, carving into the lines of the invaders. Of commandos dodging long streams of incoming fire to smash aside Brutes with a single blow, or to snipe corrupted turians with but a split second of aiming. Of rank upon rank of lesser House sisters, smiling as they held a line they knew could not be held, screaming in defiance and rage as their barriers shattered and their warp strikes drew Reaper blood.

As we fled, I will never forget. Of the might of the High Solarch, as she drew the warpfire of a thousand matriarchs into a single bright line of force, and blasted a Reaper from the sky with a scream of defiant rage, only to stare in horror as the machine recovered itself and answered in red fire that immolated them all. Of their shining ranks being smashed to sparks and paste at the blast of Reapers, of pulling Harvesters from the sky in blasts of blue radiance and artful long-range fire from Adept cannons. Of the tiny figures of asari swarming over the surface of a Reaper as it fell, dying in victory.

I remember gunships falling from the sky, burning leaves firing even as they fell to splash into the bloodied waters of the ocean. The glowing hot rage of Uressa T'Shora as she consumed her own body and held a shield against the firepower of an army, blue fire eating her alive as her Art tore her to pieces, and smiling a final time as she sent it all back at them, carving apart the ranks.

And I remember the final charge of the Houses of the Thirty, far beyond any ability to regroup, seeking to drive back that which they could never stop by sheer fury. They cut their way to the anti-air cannon Reapers trying to stop the escape ships, and dozens of them leapt into and atop it, detonating their warp swords or pouring their very lives into blasts of warp fire to bring the things down.

The Thirty died that day, young and old, strong and weak. They died in torrents of red, hateful fire, by the hands of husks and corrupted things, at the screams of the banshees. But they tore the heart from the Reaper force. They claimed nine of the Great Reapers, more than fifty lesser Reapers, and a billion of their corrupted soldiers, and allowed three billion asari to escape Thessia's end.

I remember the singing most of all. The last of the Long Dirges, chanting the glories of the Thirty Houses even as they fell in purple ruin and blue defiance. The flametrees were alight with fires, the spires burned and crumbled into ruins. To sing of past victories, in the face of a death so horrific that that it must have seemed like waking nightmare.

It was an ending to a dream that lasted for an age and beyond. Of their ranks, less than twenty, most of them children, now remain, and none of us have ever tried to reclaim that which the Thirty represented. To understand the Thirty, you must never forget that final sacrifice. They were perhaps blind, most often selfish, and all too often cruel – but they meant well, and in the end they atoned for their sins in the way Athame would have wanted them to.

If not for the Charge of the Thirty, the Reapers would have not hesitated at Thessia, and the Asari Fleet would have been pinned and destroyed. All would have been lost. Many will judge them harshly – and with good reason. But do not let that blot out their final sacrifice.

To speak of them … it will be another time. But I will speak a little of their impact on the asari.

* * *

**ON THE INVOCATIONS AND THE THIRTY**

Asari society, as my aithntar and cousin Sulasia so repeatedly complained about, was heavily occluded by ritual. The majority of this was to be found in the ranks of the Thirty and the Clans, but even everyday asari clanless had countless small rituals and invocations they relied upon.

The Clans and clanless, in particularly, constantly spoke of the Thirty only with the Invocation of Duty. Many have heard such speak of the Thirty, suffixed by a short phrase.

Holyness walks in their steps. Graceful are their ways. Sins recoil from their footfalls.

Such things were one more piece of how the Thirty ruthlessly enforced dominance, but they were also one of the last vestiges of Athamist ritual. As my mother wrote:

'_Those not of Athame's blood are seen, in the light of the Thirty, to be lacking in the illuminated guidance to steer their own course through the rough seas of the long years of life. Much as a maiden must experience many things to find the shorelines of her own persona, and the matron must embrace that which is calm and ordered in her life of raising her children, the clanless wheel near mindlessly in the grip of tides of wanderlust and the Clans in strict organization._

_One could make the case that reinforcement of the fact that the Thirty are superior to others is heavy-handed, but the intention is far different. The Clans and clanless are free to live how they wish. Not for them is the worry of the dangers from salarians, the aggression of the turians, and the wiles to deflect such. Their lives are not dominated by the stress of policing one another, the dancing balance of ascention and influence that defines the Thirty.'_

Many invocations – such as the Fifty Invocations of Greeting – were strictly rituals designed to force the submission of ambitious family members to the leaders. Others – the blade dance rituals of a matriarch, the Fire Path rituals when a maiden first bloomed in her azure – were corrupted rituals from the paganistic and panthesistic cults that formed later on in asari history.

But the Invocation of Moon's Year Dancing, the nightlong celebration of moonlight on the one day a year the moons hung high in the sky for most of the night, was my mother's favorite. She wrote of one such thing fondly:

_'Eth and I were bound closer than water and the seafloor from the time we could walk, but there was a short period of time early in our lives where I seriously gave consideration to simply fleeing my House, my Family, and to wander the stars with her. Part of this was, of course, due to isolation – my elder sister was the pride of the family, I was the gawkling and ill-talented child who could not properly hold a warp sword and was too interested in ancient history. Aethyta was the pouting rebel, who had the grace of a nexa beast rampaging through the oceans and the tact, even at that age, of a particularly foul-mouthed, cantankerous and surly krogan._

_So it was no surprise we felt isolated, and that as we grew older our contact became less of sheer friendship and more of a crutch in our lives. Did I love her? I loved her more than anything else at that age, and if I grew away from such in my later years, it was no fault of hers, rather my own for letting my family's demands alter who I was._

_In those days, before such a thing, I felt more fully alive than I did for centuries after. The night of Moon Year's Dancing when I reached my first century was the most breathtaking moment of my life. Eth and I recklessly climbed the out-thrust knee of Mount Ithanar in the Skypillars, braving ice-slicked rocks and firesnakes with little more than our immature bodies and equally shaky biotics. Thousands of feet in the air, more than once one of us would slip, and only the sweat-slicked grasp of the other would save us._

_We won out a last, gazing over the white-hot glory of Armali below us, as the moon rose. The Thirty were assembled for this, the matriarchs, eldest daughters, honor sisters, paladins. They were a single host, glittering in the moonlight – beautiful war priestesses clad in night air, oils and paints thick upon their bodies. Gleaming matriarchs in ancient war armors, smoked crystal and silver, and a thousand fluttering flags of sigils. The banners of the houses fluttered in the stinking, smoke-tainted wind – the shatha and the spear, the wave and eel, the delicate silk shining in the faint light._

_And then, as the moon reached its zenith, they began to sing the Long Dirge, the remembrance of the fall of House T'Urna and House T'Curth. Their voices rose in fury and in sadness, in laughter and in tears._

_I watched as the People danced and sang, as the biotic fires raced to the skies, as Eth held me and we simply gloried in the beauty and the power of our people in that moonlight. And I realized all the silly rituals we had were to remind us of these things, to anchor us to the beauty and majesty that each new day can bring.'_

I have my doubts that my mother's wisdom was wholly correct on these things, but perhaps Sara's cynical nature has rubbed off on me. At the same time, I remember the burning flametrees and the final charge of the Thirty …

...and I wonder.

* * *

**ON OATHS AND THE THIRTY**

One aspect of asari culture my mother investigated – and that, after conversations with Nashan, I now understand to be a holdover from Prothean culture – was the concepts of the Three Oaths. There are the Oaths of Sublimation, the Oaths of Dedication, and the Oaths of Clarification. Each one of these played many roles in asari society – and a few crept even into some aspects of human and turian culture.

I remain uncertain why such Oaths originally arose among my people, but the fragments of writings I have from the Dreaming Eras would suggest they were used to enforce peace among tribes in our more conflicted early history. The Oaths were (and still are) taken extremely seriously – Oathbreaker is an epithet more vile than pureblood, a mark that an asari can no longer even call herself asari – one who is to be shunned from any bond, harried by the Justicars, and eventually killed, hung feet first and have her eyes torn from her head so that she can wander the Beyond blind and lost.

Each of the types of Oaths played particular roles in our culture and society, as I said earlier. The Oaths of Dedication were mostly used by the Clans, when setting out to work on a large-scale project. There were three such Oaths. The first Oath of Dedication was used when creating a single work – a warp sword, a ship, or a suit of Paladin armor – that was intended as a gift or product for the Thirty. It bound the makers to only deliver the finished goods to their buyer, and to swear to keep the secrets of their creation hidden. Violators would be cast from their clan and hunted to death by the Justicars.

The second and third Oaths of Dedication were more dire, used when either peforming large scale constructions (cities, road networks, and the like) or civic architecture such as the massive renovations of the Walls of Armali with art. Basically, they swore the lives of the Clans to the completion of the project, to fair dealing in terms of cost and materials, and to put forth their greatest effort in the creation. The Second Oath was far less binding, merely a solemn vow – the Third pledged the lives of the Clan Members and their bond-mates to guarantee against failure.

The most famous, of course, would be the Oaths of Sublimation, the nine oaths that bound asari in submission to others, and tied their fates in lesser or greater degrees to the will of another being. The most fell of the Oaths, the Ninth and Final Oath, was only used a handful of times in the entire sweep of asari history.

The Nine Oaths all shared a few traits. They bent the lives and the will of the oath-maker to the one being sworn to. There were no excuses, and no way of being released – swearing such oaths was entirely voluntary, and to be forsworn was to be cast out. Each of the Oaths had differing penalties for breaking it.

The utterly terrifying Ninth Oath was the most extreme – it swore the death of another, no matter the cost to the asari herself or those of her family. An asari swearing the Ninth Oath was going to kill someone, and if they were unable to do so, would kill themselves. As you might imagine, such an oath was usually taken up by certain Justicars going after dangerous ardat-yakshi as a method of ensuring they would succeed.

The Eight Oath was the most commonly used oath, sealing the asari's lips about certain information on the threat of their prosperity and position. The Seventh was used to swear sexual fidelity – rarely needed except when a bondmate had such critical information that she could not afford to meld with others in any way.

The rest of the Oaths had more varied purposes – for example, the Third was used mostly by Justicars, to suspend the Code to follow the dictates of another, and the Fifth was used only by members of the Thirty, in the rare instances they were indebted to a member of the clanless to treat them as they would their own daughters until such a debt was repaid.

Ultimately, the Oaths of Sublimation gained a fell reputation due to the Sixth Oath, which was the most binding of the Oaths – it basically made its swearer the eternal slave of the person being sworn to. While never a common thing, there were asari who forced others into this Oath and abused them, forcing them into unwanted relationships and even force-bondings.

The last of the Oaths, the Oaths of Clarification, were the most rarely used. Utilized when asari were interacting with other species for the most part, these Oaths were tailored specifically to each race. The Salarian Oath of Clarification was sworn by the asari who chose to live on Sur'kesh and enhance the understanding of asari language to the salarian scriveners, while a modified form of the Eight Oath of Sublimation became the Oath of Clarification for asari who wanted to be Systems Alliance citizens.

The Oaths of Clarification basically stated the asari surrendered their place in the Republics, and would follow without hesitation the dictates of the race's leaders rather than the wishes of the Thirty. The Thirty, quite obviously, usually only allowed the Clanless to take such oaths – I am the only known asari of the Thirty who has sworn such to the Systems Alliance.

The Breaking of Oaths was covered in six different sutras of the Justicar Code, but essentially boiled down to a death sentence except in a few of the Oaths of Sublimation. Particularly, the Eighth and Second Oath could be broken with a loss of prestige and property if the information gained was dire enough that it threatened the asari as a people.

Other acts of oath-breaking resulted in the terrible vengeance I have already mentioned. I always found it fascinating that even in the Alliance, or among the outcasts of Aria's empire, an asari with the cachet of an Oathbreaker would be scorned – or assaulted. Some traditions were very deeply worked into the very fabric of our society.

The Oaths themselves no doubt seem like yet another tool – and yet, the utility of such was needed by asari culture. Without the Oaths, I fear the asari would be all too likely to depend too much on compromise, on consensus. Sometimes stands had to be made, sometimes actions had to be, as the turians say, owned. The Oaths provided that.

* * *

**ON FIDELITY AND BONDS, AS THE THIRTY SEE THEM**

Humans have a very different outlook on 'romance' and the place of spouses than my people do, for a host of reasons. My mother found such differences fascinating, and attempted to draw parallels between human and asari interactions in long-term relationships.

Bluntly put (Shepard has, after all, rubbed off on me) my people found concepts like 'fidelity' to be limiting, to place artificial constraints on an act that was – to us – of no particular moment. I have read the amusing rants of certain Cerberus operatives, as the Harper Institute has declassified a number of internal documents.

Most humans who dislike asari see us, as I understand it, as 'sluts' – that is, the way asari have both emphasized and trivialized sexuality makes us … what? Unclean? Impure? Immoral? The concepts are never clearly delinted.

Asari cultural viewpoints on pure sexuality are complex. To be fair, having bonded with a human, I understand some of the issues humans have. As I once said to Sara, there cannot be a closer connection between two humans. It is, due to evolution or by cultural dint, very nearly the central focus of humanity – affecting your art, your religion, your music, your dress, even your languages. Despite the many barriers and taboos thrown up around it, humans are strangely fearful of it.

Asari see it as pleasure, and pleasure must always be pursued in the asari mind as it makes joining and linking easier. I myself never … indulged in such things – few asari wish to dabble with purebloods, and of those who did I was poorly prepared for the act – but I grasp the idea. The mere act means nothing, be it with another asari or an alien.

That is not to say asari are not affected. Our sexual urges are many times stronger than a human teenaged males. There are asari who have not gone a single day without such activity in literally hundreds of years, and see no problems with such. Such is not seen as sinful in our culture – it is merely pleasure.

And I do not mean to demean the clanless as I say this, but I fear a large part of human's perception of asari is strictly due to the clanless and their lack of … propriety about some things.

The Thirty are certainly more circumspect than, say, the average clanless. While fidelity was not a strong suit among the Thirty either, there was definitely more of a focus on the concept of r'sathis, or 'the motions of two points'. Put bluntly, an asari of the Thirty was expected to hew to certain conventions.

Younger daughters were expected to dabble – and dabble only – with humans, salarians, turians and (if very daring) drell in order to find the kind of alien mates they would wish to have children with. By the time a daughter became a matron, she was expected to have the ability to bond with one of these aliens and have at least a single child.

Until a bonded mate died, no asari of the Thirty would even think of melds with another being, and even anything beyond the most shallow of links was frowned upon. The Thirty tended to only have children with other beings of importance, and such beings had their secrets. Losing such bonds was seen as a part of life for a member of the Thirty – to experience such pain hardened you, made you capable of doing that ….

Which you later regretted. The acts I undertook when I though my Sara was dead were sickening, horrifying, and criminal. I took pleasure in the suffering of my targets, I killed innocent people – children, bystanders, family members of the targets. I had people sold into slavery, I sold information that ruined lives and dreams.

The pain I had suffered was so great that nothing else mattered. And this … hardening … is a key reason why the Thirty were so much more fixated on fidelity (in asari standards) than our clanless were. A clanless rarely had the biotic power for the deeper bonds unless their mate was also a very strong biotic, and for numerous reasons such liaisons were rare. Turian biotics were required to mate with another biotic of their Cabal – only those widowed and in the Deathwatch were exempt.

Likewise, salarian and drell biotics were more like property than people, and human biotics loved the asari but most were simply not of a station to dally with an asari when they were already under suspecion of their government merely for being biotic. As such the bonds of clanless were often shallow things, and while breaking it hurt them badly, it did not tend to shatter their entire personality as it did to one of the Thirty.

Drell and humans were the most intolerant of infidelity of any kind – salarians could care less, and turians did not usually get offended as long as the other party was not another turian. From the asari viewpoint of course, infidelity is merely more spice and things to feel and experience when bonded with a partner.

That is not to say some asari didn't cling to being loyal. My sister of the heart, Telanya, would probably have put out her own eyes rather than bond with anyone but Garrus. And Aria T'Loak, of all people, while presenting the image of being a hedonist with thousands of sex partners, was actually very traumatized and only bonded with a series of turian females. Uressa T'Shora lost her alien bondmate early on in life and had a quiet relationship with a lesser House member that she kept faithfully to for over seven hundred years, despite being so beautiful that literally ever living thing in the galaxy would have gladly filled any such voids.

Ultimately, of course, sexuality has entirely different connotations for asari than any other form of life. The contention by Tiffany Minsta of the Harper Institute is almost insulting – she is indeed her father's daughter – but the underlying premise that the Protheans deliberately made the asari mono-gender in an attempt at making us capable of self-reproduction to boost our population may not be far off. Certainly, the tolerance of Athamist priests for only those pantheistic gods and cults that engaged in what humans would call hedonism and orgies is … curious and ominous.

I do not wish to think the Thirty cheapened the clanless view of sexuality to appeal to other races as a method of infiltrating them and dominating them. But I do not have the faith to say otherwise, as a snippet from my mother's journals illustrates :

'_There are those, of course, who do not understand the injunction of Athame when she says that the highest goal of life is more life, of love more love, of pleasure more pleasure. Certainly the humans would claim such is 'immoral' and that their own God spoke of fecund production but faithful consummation. It is worth noting their god-avatar was born of a virgin – a miraculous impossibility that removed the 'stain' of the 'sin' of sexuality from the whole affair._

_I am not sure why or how 'sin' is involved in lovemaking in the human mind, or why their God would make the act that allows a race to grow into a morass of issues on morality. I do know that applying our standards to them – or turians, or salarians, or even krogan – is as mindless and pointless as they doing so to us._

_For a female of most other races, sex requires submission – to hormones, to penetration, to in most cases some form of 'ownership'. You will hear humans, drell, and turians alike talking about their sexual partners as 'my woman'. This view is shorn of the delicacy of the asari viewpoint because what we would consider sex is simply not the same thing._

_One can argue the old saying that the river wends only where the land allows, but the argument that somehow asari morals are superior to alien ones and that theirs cannot apply to us in turn strikes me as fundamentally dishonest. What do we gain by the way we act? What do we lose?'_

As with most of the questions my mother asked, the answers elude me.


	8. Belief

**No Single Raindrop**

_Matriarch Benezia T'Soni, on Siari, Athame, and Asari Culture, through the lens of those left behind. _

_As gathered and organized by Liara T'Soni-Shepard_

* * *

Many of my mother's writings touched on siari and its aspect as 'guiding hand' rather than unifying force. As I have written earlier, siari is not a religion, not in the manner of the worship of Athame.

But the writings of earlier Matriarchs influenced much of my mother's thinking, and parts of siari were, in latter days, twisted to fit needs and perceptions of those not asari. The Triune was hardly immune to this.

When people hear of matriarchal followers and biotic cults, I have no idea what outlandish concepts or fantastical whimsy they conjure. Certainly, my own remembrance of the Triune Unity is … compromised, first by my young age, and then by the horror they became later on. But I could argue – and based on my mother's works, so did she – that 'asari religion' has more to do with justifications than explanations.

That will probably sound nonsensical to the human reader, and yet I imagine a salarian grasps the concept quite easily.

* * *

**ON ASARI AND BELIEF AND RELIGION IN GENERAL**

My mother's deft phrasing is so much better than my own that I cannot help but to again quote her writings directly:

_'Wisdom lies not in the knowing of things, nor even in the understanding of when to use such knowledge, but in grasping the essential concept that knowing is a goal, not a step. _

_We all 'know' certain things. Asari talk of the certitude of the tides, a turian speaks of trail spoor, a salarian of the cycles that never bend, humans of 'common sense'. These things that we all arrogantly assume we know, because challenging said perceptions is not something most people do, define more of our understanding that most wish to admit._

_We have long assured ourselves of only one viewpoint making sense – that only one set of results can ultimately be derived from a given input. That brutality means disregard, that apathy means laziness, that valor and honor are good and that deceit and cowardice are bad. But this knowing, these … beliefs – they are merely shapes in darkness._

_It is easy enough for the fool to convince themselves a given belief is 'right'. In every society, there have been conflicts between those who value older ways and simpler times and those who chase after variance, diversity, and change. Despite the strident beliefs of both sides, none of those are actually positives … or negatives. _

_Belief is the blind acceptance of so-called truth without evidence. Science is no less mystical, hysterical and full of inconstancy and myth than the most ignorant krogan creation sagas. Salarians mock the idea of a 'magical sky goddess' who watches over everything constantly, attacking such ideals with logic traps and historical deconstructions. Yet they must, perforce, resort to made up terms that, mathematically, simply cannot be proven to describe dark energy, gravity, genetic nucleonics and chemistry. _

_Belief is rarely buttressed by fact...and more by what we wish to believe is truth. This is the case in religion, and in every other strongly held belief. Few if any sentients, asari or otherwise, are truly strong enough to face unadulterated truth. Observations and data and analysis is not always truth. The scientific method only works if one is truly committed to having no observable bias...and few beings can do so._

_As for philosophical truths, at best they are soothing constructs, at worse … lies. _

_Peace is a lie, passion is a lie, valor is a lie, cowardice, a lie. Lies we tell ourselves to boost our own egos, sooth our own consciousness, or twist the perceptions of others. Humans believe their God manifested on the planet and allowed himself to be executed to clean them of a sin that makes no logical sense, one inflicted on them by the manipulations of a so-called lesser enemy that yet was allowed to derail God's Plan. Turians convince themselves of a spirit afterlife in the face of the fact that their own scriptures suggested originally that the spirits were not turian and that their spirits warn them that their acts are not what leads them into the Beyond. _

_The salarian wheel, with its maddening circularity in reasoning and logic, fails to give us anymore than the how, and even with that its mysticism must cover the fact that many priests have visions that never come to pass or even close to passing. I will not even touch on the truly hilarious beliefs of the drell, or quarians, or the hanar._

_One can believe in whatever they like. There are humans who have defied terrible odds in the name of their God, and turians who have done great good in the pursuit of a spiritual afterlife. Yet ultimately, wisdom, as I said, is not about belief, but understanding what you know and do not know are steps._

_One cannot ascend the stairs of understanding by rushing up them. They are slick with the ice of false assumptions, and there is no handrail – to slip is to fall to agony or worse. How many untold billions have been butchered in the name of the Dark Gods, over differences in human faith, over the visions of Wheel Priests or the drug-addled proclamation of some elcor Lifemaster?_

_A river carves its own course, yet must always run to the sea. These beliefs are a search for something greater, something more powerful – and the fact that every race pursues such implies we are either all crazy … or we are missing that which should be obvious to us.'_

As a rule, asari 'religion' has been contentious after the war with the revelations regarding Athame and the Thirty (and the pantheistic cults,but I will touch on that later). That does not mean She does not still draw worship. The Keeper of Secrets was too powerful a symbol, and her words too needed in these dark times, to turn away from.

And yet …

The falsity of Athame's religion makes me wonder fearfully if some Prothean stunt was not behind the turian spirits, or the God of Moses, or the spirit rings of Dekunna. It makes me wonder if Plenix was a mere myth. The true face of the Dark Gods – the Black Leviathans, so opposed to the plans of their cousins who sided with Sara – makes me also wonder how much tampering was at the hands of the ancestors of the Reapers.

Certainly I have touched ancient stones, cave sites and murals of blood or pastes of cringing figures worshiping a Leviathan. I have seen the ruins of Vethlan, where a race six million years dead created a shrine to such creatures in full belief they were gods.

Having seen a third of the stars in the sky blotted out, and third of the seas turn to blood from the fires in the heavens, having seen the madness and sheer wrongness of the Darkness, to deny that gods could exist seems folly.

* * *

**ON ASARI AND DEATH**

A core part of religion, of course, is a being's relationship to death. I have said elsewhere that asari do not fear death. We do not fear our own death, that is true...but the deaths of those we love, those who make our lives full – those we fear more than anything else.

I find it amusing that out of all of the races, only the most short lived – the vorcha – and the most long lived – the krogan – have no fear of death at all. The vorcha 'thought-maker', Vershiss, made pointed commentary on the nature of death from a vorcha's viewpoint : sleeping without hunger.

Such a simplified view is seen as laughable by most. But does a vorcha lose, or a salarian, or a human, anything due to their short lives?

Many of the people I loved well as my friends were humans, quarians, turians. I held the aging form of Tali when Jeff died, and I watched with sorrow the fall of the last scion of the House of Kyle, spitting defiance. I have seen so many die.

I could, I suppose, make the empty point that siari does, that we keep such alive in our memories, through bonds and melds. I have pointed out that I have the memories of my oldest ancestor, at least a fragment of them. And what are we, honestly, if not our memories?

Yet I cannot make such a statement. My experiences with the Catalyst showed me that death, to a sufficiently powerful being, is an irritant. Sara's defiance of such a thing, while certainly unnatural and abetted by horrifying costs, is another data point along that train of thought.

Asari, as a rule, neither chase nor flee from death. By the end of our long lives we are, almost always, terribly tired – of lost bonds, of missing friends, of a body once lithe and light now heavy and stiff. Humans look jealously upon us as we age only gently, yet cannot imagine what it is like, to bear a millenia of sins, of mistakes, of missed chances and dead loved ones, and to have to wake up knowing you may have four more centuries of this to deal with.

I have survived Sara's death twice. I shall not do so a third time. I am so bound to her now, such survival would be impossible – I have perverted every possible art of my people to do so. I spit on the idea of living without her, in a world of darkness, and lost broken dreams, and tears that cannot be ceased because nothing has meaning.

Death chases those who have sharply limited lifespans. Humans fear it more than other races, and yet are the most likely to embrace it as well. From the First Contact War battles at Sol to the final stand against the Reapers, none can forget the chill that raced over them when they heard the high, piercing cries of the humans giving themselves to the kamikaze.

Their glorious defiance at the end, the unbroken form of Tradius Ahern, alone, atop a pile of slain foes daring the huge form of Harbinger to strike him down, is the very image of humanity's relationship with death.

Asari … have a more complex view. When my days darken and my body will no longer respond to me, and I pass from waking to the 'sleep without hunger' the vorcha claim, do I pass beyond? Do I cease to exist? Athamist works claim one finds a great light that absorbs and diffuses ones self among the stars.

My mother, I fear, saw no light at the end of her life, and my aithntar made a joke of its lack when she finally surrendered to the years. I am unsure if this should cause despair or curiosity in me. I do not fear death … but I am left to wonder if it is the start of another journey, or rest without hunger.

* * *

**ON ASARI AND MATRIARCHAL MOVEMENTS**

Perhaps the most enduring image one has of an asari matriarch is the concept of her followers. To understand this, you must understand a matriarch, and her place in asari society.

Not every asari becomes a matriarch. The process is no certain thing, many matrons simply lacking the strength of will, of body, of spirit to endure. The biological changes and stresses are well known, but there is also an aspect of what non-asari will no doubt call mystical overtones in the ascension of an asari to matriarch status.

Of the clanless, I am lead to understand, less than a third who reached the proper ages managed the transition at all, and many of them died within a century. The Clans were more robust, but even so less than two-thirds would make the transition. Even among the Thirty, nothing was guaranteed.

As such, a matriarch is not simply 'an elder' that is afforded respect. It took immense strength of will to retain one's self, to bind together a coherent personality out of the chaos of centuries of linked memories, bonded emotions, and the like. Most matriarchs, as a result, tended to hold strong opinions about certain aspects of life.

More importantly, having seen so much, having lived through every aspect of asari life, they were uniquely suited to provide guidance – especially to young maidens, whose impulses overrode caution and who developed maturity only slowly through the slow compilation of mistakes and pain.

A matriarch – regardless of her station – was always afforded respect. I remember when I was younger a visibly aged matriarch of the clanless coming to beg a boon of House T'Soni. Her clothing was worn and humble, but carefully cleaned. Her whole demeanor was downcast and almost hesitant, but she did not stutter or act fearful. Her voice was almost rough, harmonious with a thousand cycles of pain and loss, joy and hope.

My mother said but six words to her. "Your daughters are as my daughters." I know not what aid my mother gave to them, but the look on the matriarchs face was surprising. My mother then asked for the matriarchs philosophy.

At first she demurred, claiming her low wisdom should not sully the halls of the Thirty. My mother replied again, with but a single phrase.

"Wisdom flows not to position, but to those who have experienced and endured."

Listening to the words of the clanless, hearing her speak of how she wished her daughters could take heed of the sacrifices made so they could go off-world, of the fact that while all had food and shelter, that education was lacking and had to be made up by way of private tutoring of uncertain providence, of nights where some wild maidens of the Clans would go tearing through the outlying spreads of the clanless wreaking havoc...was my first exposure to how high I was lifted.

Matriarchs, of all stations, are held in the highest esteem. Humans seem to prefer leaders who inspire bravery, rage and admiration. Most of these, I must note, are males, and even while human culture claims it is more balanced than in days of old, there is little evidence of such things being true. Turians have clear and sharply defined demands of their leaders.

Salarians defer to their dalatrasses, but even there, one can see the hand of the bombastic, cocksure male, in the STG, their corporations, and their military. Batarian leadership … is best not touched upon.

Asari instinctively distrust a leader who leads by charisma, or talent, or power. There is nothing for those who follow with such a leader save to _follow_ them. A matriarch shares her wisdom. She enhances those who follow, imparting knowledge, examples, and trust. She shares her wealth of both money and of reassurance.

Matriarchs are drawn to this position. It is no chance thing that the Silvering Chantry of the Open Arms, the largest post-Reaper orphanage open to all races, is almost entirely staffed by volunteer matriarchs with no families of their own. A matriarch will patiently listen to squabbling turian and batarian children with the same gentle, peaceful smile as she will calm a nigh hysterical human female about her first period, or a krogan boy about his crest coming in crooked.

Matriarchal roles are not … leadership as aliens would understand. Once again I must fall back to poetry, and this one translates particularly poorly.

_A wise gaze is gained not by mere perspective_

_but by enduring, as the shores endure the waves, or the oceans the salt and eezo_

_One can always lead, but without knowing where one walks_

_are you guide or merely fool_

_Wisdom is gained by knowing, by the black knife of pain_

_Broken bonds, broken truths, broken dreams_

_What maiden thinks of failure in her dance_

_of heartbreak in her kisses_

_of death in her glad embrace of life_

_What matron sees her children die before her_

_or contemplates the sky where a fallen star might smite them all_

_or the distance between mother and child in the dark_

_Wisdom is not something gained _

_from books, or by merely living_

_it must be pursued and honed_

_the edge of a sword_

_the edge of a word_

_these are two akin, weapons, tools for the use_

_a matriarch must handle both_

_just as one cannot walk without two legs_

_cannot swim without two arms_

_one cannot lead without both sides of wisdom_

_loss, and gain_

_Wisdom is that which is gained only by loss_

_loss of love, loss of innocence, loss of life_

_and that which is lost by gain_

_gaining scars, gaining heartbreak, gaining cruelty_

_The dartfish does not swim in packs out of beauty_

_the nexa beast does not huddle with its kin for warmth's sake_

_the shantha bird flocks behind those who know the way_

_and who can know the way of life _

_save one who has trodden that hard road_

_and left a trail of tears and regrets for others to follow_

Matriarchs often defined themselves by their teachings, their beliefs gained and tested over the centuries, and none but a fool among my people would pass up having to learn first hand the hard lessons they had already endured.

That other aliens listened, I think, is more due to the mystique and (as my aithntar put it) sensual overtones of what the asari were.

* * *

**ON THE PANTHEIST CULTS**

Athame was the primary goddess of our culture, but hardly the only one. There were of course her two assistants, but aside from that there was the older, more mythological cult of the so-called "Dreaming Dancers".

Before Thessia's destruction, the Thirty put a hiatus on all archaeological research – no doubt to keep quiet about the origins of the Thirty and the Secret of Athame's Fate. With the fall of the Reapers and the efforts of the Unison Pact, however, Thessia is slowly being cleared of the damage done to it. While the planet is badly wounded and much of what made it beautiful is gone, some historical research is now progressing.

Curiously, the origins of the Dreaming Dancers, despite their mythological trappings, appear to be based in fact. There is fragmentary evidence these were some kind of precursor to ardat-yakshi, capable of holding massive melds of hundreds of asari at once.

The Pantheon of Surrender, as it was called, was far different than Athamist principles. Athame was glory and sunlight, life, defiance, hope, joy. The Dancers were creatures of dreams and walking meditation, of unfettered reckless carnality and fecundity. Their portfolios were tied in deeply with early fertility rites of both agriculture and birth, and their worship was extremely fixated on sexuality and what I suspect humans would term sexual addiction.

The Consort aboard the Citadel was a follower of this religion, and so were her many acolytes. It was a hedonistic, shallow sort of faith, one that championed the concept that life was a dream made only real by bringing forth more life – that, ultimately, joyful and pleasurable experiences should be chased to obsessive ends because sorrow and grief were the ultimate destinations of all living things.

It is no surprise that some of the cults took fester and root in human imaginations – and that some matriarchal cults undertook aspects of them, and not just in humans. The colony of Thirax on the fringes of Hierarchy space was well known for the amounts of outcast female turians who gave themselves over to the chase of such pleasures.

Ultimately, the pantheist cult were … sick. One of my cousins, Yvael, was a follower of such, and it was only later in life I was able to learn of her force-melding with several other cousins, at entirely inappropriate ages. There were always Justicars executing the occasional asari who lost herself in such pursuits and used the old forbidden 'melds of the knife' to mentally and emotionally rape other asari.

I find the human viewpoint on such a thing curious – the idea of a female acting in such a role to other females somehow strikes them as implausible. In some ways, this is not inaccurate – asari saw such acts as horrific and unnatural. Despite being born as high as I myself, Yvael's strength was broken and she suffered truly vile punishments – including having parts of her mind shattered and memory crushed – for her actions.

And yet, I blame the culture that allowed the cults to take root for her actions. By the time of the Reaper War, asari culture had grown twisted, sick, exhausted. The endless machinations of the Thirty had caused all sorts of upheaval, and even as the clanless stirred under their boot-heel, the Thirty saw only ways to leverage other races under their dominance.

The Pantheist cults offered an escape from that – many had smuggling connections to allow asari to flee to the Traverse, or wildcat human colonies, or independent turian colonies. They dabbled heavily in drugs and other substances – Eclipse, as a whole, was simply riddled with the cults, not suprising considering the … tastes … of their mistress, Jona Sederis.

More than that, however, I fear the cults were possibly traps in and of themselves, laid down by the Thirty for the precise method of drawing those who were unhappy into the open and making them easy pray for the Nightwind. When my own eyes were opened, and I discovered things about my people I did not wish to know, that evidence was almost glaringly obvious.

The cults, surprisingly, continue to this day, although most are adulterated with other concepts as well. Still, I dislike them. While I cannot claim to be a fan of the work of Jennifer Minsta, her savaging of the Versafold Paths cult and the teachings of Matriarch Veltanshes was most certainly on target. The asari people, without the iron hand of the Thirty to guide them, are vulnerable to being taken advantage of by other unscrupulous types – and by their own matriarchs, seeking to step into the vacuum of power left behind by the Thirty.


	9. Temple

**No Single Raindrop**

_Matriarch Benezia T'Soni, on Siari, Athame, and Asari Culture, through the lens of those left behind. _

_As gathered and organized by Liara T'Soni-Shepard_

* * *

There have been, since the end of the Reaper War, many questions asked about Athame, but many more asked about the Temple of Athame, and the secrets and mysteries it held onto. I fear many of those mysteries are fated to be lost in the haze of Thessia's ruin, the only beings able to answer the questions now dead.

However, even picking through the ruins has enlightened us in many aspects of the worship of Athame, and ultimately the main reason the Thirty decided to expiate their shame by death against the Reaper hordes – that they betrayed their Goddess for power, and defied her Avatar more than once out of sheer stubbornness. That in the end they repented does not cleanse them of their crime, or that most of the Temple's actions were penance, not merely worship.

The Temple was one of the most important and critical institutions in asari society. The influence of not only its leaders but the rank and file impacted every level of the Asari Republic – and in the days since the Reaper War, the loss and absence of the Temple is keenly felt.

* * *

**ORGANIZATION**

At its most basic, the Church of Athame had a simple structure. While of course anyone could worship Athame and honor her, only the Thirty were likely to do so in a formal fashion, and so over time the Church took on overtones found in most of the Houses of the Thirty – elegance, arrogance, dismissal of those less than yourself, and complete self-confidence.

The basic ranks of the Church were split between the Path of Light and Path of Mercy. The formal names were more elaborate – the Eternal Flame of Athame's Light for the war priestesses, and the Gentle Embrace of Athame's Mercy for the Path of Mercy.

The Path of Mercy were best described as preachers, I think. Most of them attended services regularly, and acted as prayer leaders, missionaries, and siari philosophers. Their focus was on explaining and clarifying the words of Athame to the rest of the Thirty (and others who chose to worship Athame).

The Path of Mercy had two main groupings in and of itself, the Daughters of the Sun and the Daughters of the Moon. The former focused more on being missionaries and active preachers, while the latter were more retiring and focused on philosophy and writings.

The bulk of theory, theosophical argument and theological knowledge arose from the Path of Mercy, and their ranks were dotted with matriarchs who, in their old age, attempted to preserve their teachings and understandings by merging their own wisdom with that of Athame. As a result, many troubled young asari of the Houses often came to the Temple asking for guidance when their path clashed with the goals of their mother or aithntar.

For the most part, however, I have sadly found the Path of Mercy was invisible to the greater masses of asari, much less the rest of the galaxy. Unlike the militant arm of the church, these simple thinkers and writers had no fell powers, did not cavort about naked, and lacked the charisma and presence of the war priestesses. And yet, I think the true wisdom of the Church was exemplified by their acts.

When catastrophe smote worlds and relief was sent, it was the simple Daughters of the Path of Mercy that distributed aid, food, care packages and what medical care they could offer. It was these simple sisters who comforted the ardat-yakshi in their cloistered prisons, these humble souls who managed all of the orphanages on Thessia.

Ultimately, despite the heroics of the Thirty themselves on the plains of Serrice at the end, it was the Path of Mercy who gave their lives ensuring the orphans and helpless in the hospitals were evacuated, often standing full in the path of husk soldiers and Reaper abominations to do so – despite their lack of potent biotics. The fact they died to the last to protect their charges is worthy of both tears and a fierce sense of pride.

The other half of the Temple was far more well known, the militant arm of the church typically described as war priestesses. Their founding was ancient, as in the oldest days before the War of Queens, the only unified military force among the asari was the paladins of Athame.

The war priestess was not a soldier. Most of them (my mother being the rare exception, due to her time in the Justicars) had no formal military training of any kind. They relied on the ancient training of Matriarch Vassa, the so-called Lips of Her Voice, the asari who in ancient history was the first to hear Athame's will and recorded the Fifty-Four Elements.

The Path of Light's primary duties were fourfold – physical defense of the Temple and its worshipers, defiance of those who acted against Athame's tenets, the destruction of the most malignant of the older sex cults and ardat-yakshi organizations, and the living manifestation of the supremacy of Athame's power.

Young asari of the Thirty who were very strong in the Art were given over to the Temple for training, a task that took a full two centuries and focused the asari on the purity of biotic combat. How exactly the Temple trained the priestesses is sadly lost to us, but from rumors and bits of old historical books the basics are known.

Asari were bathed in ritual waters thick with eezo, practiced at least half the day, and used various exercises and practices to steel themselves against the nerve-pain and agony of overuse of biotics and feedback. They engaged in brutal twenty kilometer runs on a daily basis, along with ruinous levels of exercise, until the body of every priestess I can remember was a work of muscular, sensual art.

As they aged they trained with warp swords, biotics, and evasion movements incessantly. By the time an asari was considered an acolyte, she'd already become more powerful than the biotic specialists of most races. As they continued to age and practice they became only more powerful and lethal.

But in many ways, theirs was something of an empty existence. The war priestess did not, for the most part, preach much. She rarely engaged in religious thinking or research, and more often than not spent long years away from Thessia involved in the most brutal fighting against nightmare opponents. Many of them were involved in the Choir of Athame, or in safeguarding the ardat-yakshi convents and the training areas of the Temple.

But ultimately, they were very much sacrificing their independent lives to inspire awe and dread in those who beheld them on the field of battle. There are so many stories of the power of the war priestesses, especially in the last days against the Reapers. Their courage never faltered, their belief in their goddess unshakable even in the face of the fall of Thessia.

In that, I admire them and pity them both.

The ranks of the Path of Light were roughly divided into three bands of seniority, the Sisters of the Stars, Moon, and Sun. Roughly, these basically equated maidens, matrons and matriarchs respectively. For the most part, the Sisters of the Stars focused mostly on being trained, and the Sisters of the Sun on doing the training and ensuring their knowledge did not falter.

The Sisters of the Moon were the most often picked to rove abroad and get into combats, although to be fair a good number of the Sisters of the Sun did the same if they had no talent at teaching. Unlike the Path of Mercy, whose members tended to live in their own homes, almost all of the Path of Light were housed in comfortable dormitories near the Temple and other church buildings.

* * *

**LEADERSHIP**

There was a simplistic ranking system in place for both halves of the Temple: initiates were at the bottom, learning their tasks or duties. Once competent enough to do whatever they were tasked with, they were made acolytes. Acolytes advanced to Star-Sister, Moon-Sister and Sun-Sister with age and demonstrated ability.

To rise above the rank of Sun-Sister to formal Priestess of Athame was a ritualistic task of combat against a senior for the Path of Light, and a board of inquiry and presentation of revelated theological or theosophical argument for the Path of Mercy. Ultimately, full priestesses were given more freedoms than the lower ranks, and held most leadership positions within the Temple itself.

The high leadership of the Path of Mercy was based on seniority and produced works, writings, and acts, in an arcane sort of scorecard that was examined once a decade by the collected full priestesses of the group. The most scholarly of the assembled was styled as the Mother of the Moon, while the most active in relief efforts, outreach and preaching was the Mother of the Sun. Together, these two directed the actions of the rest of the Path of Mercy with oversight from the High Stellarch of the Path of Light.

The Path of Light's leadership tests were more strenuous, and only conducted once a member died or stepped down. The church overall was lead by the High Solarch, or the High Priestess of the Sun. The efforts of the path of Light in particular were lead by the High Lunarch, or the High Priestess of the Moon, while some oversight of the Path of Mercy and working with the Council of Matriarchs was the work of the High Stellarch, the High Priestess of the Stars.

Each of the three roles was seen as equal in some ways, but in most cases the Stellarch and Lunarch answered to the Solarch. The Solarch was often involved in politics, being very highly visible, as well as being more tied in with some of the outreach aspects of the Path of Mercy. The job of the High Solarch was to exemplify Athame's power through her own might, to act as a model of the supremacy of the asari, and to ensure the secrets of the Temple were never violated.

Thana Vathan was the last of the Solarchs, and perhaps the most demonstrative of them, surrounding herself with an aura of sensual mystery, showmanship, political savvy and charm that most Solarchs failed to master. At the same time she was one of the most feared warriors not only in the galaxy but in history. Even powerful figures like Tetrimus and the STG Master feared her, and my own wife said the Solarch made her feel 'like a little kid'.

The Lunarch of the Temple was, for many years, my mother Benezia. She had been Solarch for a brief time, but found the press of outside demands too much to handle. The Lunarch was, curiously enough, mostly focused on the internal aspects of the Path of Light, particularly training and biotic research, something my mother enjoyed immensely. The training schedules and combat tests were devised (and often performed) by the Lunarch. Additionally, for reasons I have not clarified yet, the Lunarch was the figure most likely chosen to perform interactions with other religions.

The Stellarch was the most complicated position, as it interacted heavily with both the Path of Mercy and the Council of Matriarchs, and quite often with other governments, businesses and the Citadel Council. The most infamous of the Stellarchs was the Dark Matriarch Trellani, who was the only non-Thirty priestess to ever reach the ranks of the leadership.

For a lesser member of the clans whose ancestors were mostly clanless, Trellani's mental ability, charisma, biotic power and skill in sword dancing were staggering, putting her almost on par with most of the Thirty. In the time before her fall there were literally fights between various Houses over who would adopt her, and her very election defused a huge amount of tensions between the Thirty and the Clans and Clanless, who saw it as a positive step.

When she fled and was accused of heinous crimes, the Church was rocked to its core. The Stellarch was usually in charge of finances and other makework that others didn't want to do, and the aftermath of her fall lead to some changes in the expectations of what the Stellarch was to do.

The Circle of Athame – the Mothers of the Sun and Moon, and the Priestesses of the Sun, Moon, and Stars – met monthly to determine the course of the Church, review new findings, biotic research, allocate funds, and other management tasks. From what I remember of my mothers words, and from Trellani's own experiences, the Temple was mostly free of manipulation by the Council of Matriarchs, or from most outside forces period.

Sadly, that meant that for the most part the Temple's gaze was turned inwards. While certainly aware of many of the problems in asari society, most of these priestesses were less than capable of seeing the problem, given that all save one of them were from the ranks of the Thirty or the Lesser Houses. Very few clanless even served as laypersons in the most humble tasks of the Path of Mercy, and only Trellani in the Path of Light.

* * *

**THEOLOGY**

The basic tenets of Athame's beliefs I have already covered, but their execution was, like many aspects of the temple, executed along the lines set out by their theological beliefs.

Athame was seen as a figure that exemplified everything the asari could be, but much of the theology itself was focused on making sure the asari people did not go astray from their path rather than pursuit of the Athamian ideals. The Eightfold Passages were scripture, to be certain, but their artistic layout and the ambiguity of some of the wording meant that over time the Church laid out its own interpretations and followed those.

The Path of Mercy was the most involved in this effort, with specific groups focused on each of the Eightfold Passages.

The Passages themselves were organized into two 'spheres' – the Ways of Dawn and the Ways of Dusk. While both were ultimately subjected to the overarching concept of the rejection of despair and the enshrinement of hope, the two Ways differed sharply in viewpoint, and I believe lead to the bifurcation of the Church – one a group of insular, gentle researchers who spent time helping the weak and needy, the other a violent band of fanatics who trained themselves to near death and cut apart the vile and evil.

The Ways of Dawn described 'Athame Ascendant', or the aspects of her that deal with the Light. The aspects were Life, Hope, Happiness, and Pleasure. Life was described not only as the production of children and the embrace of family, but of preservation of nature and beauty. Hope was focused mostly on the concept of twinned defiance and expectation, with the core concept that hope allowed us to endure all things.

Happiness and Pleasure were cautiously intermixed in most readings I have seen. The Church focused on these more lightly, wary of links to the Dreaming Dancer cults who also embraced pleasure. The Athamist ideal was more on happiness with life itself and pleasure in the enjoyment of sun upon the skin, the laugh of a child, and the love of family, rather than empty hedonism or simple amusement.

The Ways of Dusk described 'Athame Endurant', or how to resist despair and the corrosive forces that accompanied it. The aspects it embraced were Defiance, Memory, Love, and Justice. Each of these was an answer to a particular aspect of despair. Defiance was the most invoked, the simple refusal to surrender. But Memory was the aspect most actually explored and made use of. Memory of better times, of the way things should have been...

There are times I read the simple words on these battered pages, and I can almost hear the soft Call of Tears, the dirge sung by young maidens in memory of those who died saving their loved ones, or who perished not in pursuit of glory, or wealth, or power, or even revenge, but so others might live. I know many would say the Temple was guilty of hiding that which it should not have.

They may even be right.

But we cannot let ourselves forget that judgment is easy in hindsight. We must remember all of what was, not only the parts that make us angry, or we fall into the trap of hating that which is already gone, and can no longer be corrected or punished.

And I stray. Love and Justice were the other aspects of the Ways of Dusk, although these were less explored. In particular, Justice was seen mostly as something the Temple handed off to the Justicars, which I find darkly amusing. In earlier times the Temple was often the jury and judge of crimes, a task that it fell away from in later years with more governments and more influence in other areas.

* * *

**THEOSOPHY**

Unlike many religious groups, the Temple maintained very strong philosophical and mystical overtones in regards to enlightenment. The rituals by which one implored for Athame's guidance were at once both extremely ancient and curiously out of phase with everything else the Temple represented.

In the eyes of the Church, the Path of Mercy was dependent mostly on theology – that is, the study and analysis of things – to arrive at knowledge of Athame. The Path of Light did not bother with such things because only through privation, tribulation, agony and focus would a direct connection be forged, one offering spiritual insight and supernatural ability.

While many other religions (especially among humans and drell) embraced aspects of theosophical thinking, few took it to the level that the war priestesses did. Their claims of 'spiritual energies' reinforcing their bodies and 'the Gaze of Athame' giving them abilities unmatched by normal beings would be laughable... if such anomalous things had not been demonstrated, repeatedly, over thousands of years, and unmatched by other practitioners of biotics.

Sadly, most of the theory and beliefs related to this aspect of the worship of Athame was handed down verbally – very little was recorded, and most of what was written down was destroyed in the fall of Thessia. The bits that remain seem to indicate most of the initiations of young asari into the path of the war priestess – particularly the fasting, eezo immersion, drugs and near-lethal levels of physical training – were specifically designed to bring out a spiritual connection, and that such practices predated the formal organization of the Temple.

There are also disturbing similarities between the rites described and the 'rituals of submission' practiced by the Dreaming Dancer cults. While the specifics of course differ radically, the result – torture, fasting, physical exhaustion, mental exhaustion, and repeated overload of the asari's biotic network – imply they both must do something.

* * *

**IMPACT**

The activities of the Temple were varied and, while the direct worship of Athame was usually only done by the Thirty, indirect actions were common at all levels of asari society.

The Temple ran all orphanages, most of the schools and colleges of philosophy, was involved in biotic research and eezo research, and was the primary force (outside of the actions of Uressa T'Shora) in providing aid, comfort and support to the poor, needy, and downtrodden in our society.

The Path of Mercy was the part of the Temple usually involved in these endeavors, often coordinating other relief efforts and expending the Temple's titanic amounts of cash and influence to mitigate the suffering caused by tidal wave storms on Thessia and other catastrophes. The Path of Mercy also often acted as volunteer medical personnel, helped teach young asari to master their first biotics, and to perform artistic plays and works to remind all asari of Athame's love and grace.

The militant Path of Light focused more on defending asari colonies, pairing with Hunting Parties, military groups or Justicars to destroy dangers to the asari people, and acting as highly visible advertisements for the power of the asari people.


End file.
